Donald Trump is a flaccid twinkie tainting the civic forum with his hydrogenated vitriol. Undeniably fascist, he is dogwhistling for more police, racial profiling, deportation, and even, as of last week, perhaps assassination. The man is thirsty for the Fourth Reich. What more can be really said about Donald Trump than he is, without hyperbole, a human shitshow.

But the dumpsterfire that surrounds the shitshow of Donald Trump includes the wall-to-wall coverage of everything the man says and has said at him. Despite spending not a dime on airtime himself, Shitler has managed to convince all the usual media suspects to jump in and get a taste.

I don’t think there’s a way to put this fire out. It’s automated, fueled by years of us handing over everything there is to know about ourselves to the hurt machine.

Haha, that’s right, this Trump shit is actually your fault. I know the media you read wants to blame it on poor white people, but hear me out: maybe Trump is your fault.

The conductors of this dumpsterfire know what you’re reading. Conversely, they also know what you’re not reading, which to them is probably more important. They know you care a lot about Game of Thrones recaps than you do the ice caps. They know you don’t give a shit about the poor. If you did, your cookies would tell them that you’re buying books like Desmond’s Evicted or Quinones’ Dreamland, but you aren’t. No point lying about it to me. The machine knows you better than you know yourself. Besides, even if you did buy them, Amazon would know they’re sitting on your Kindle unread.

No, everything you do and don’t do online is telling publishers everything they need to know about us. The sad democracy of tracking is that the media we get is the reflection of who are are when everyone is looking. They know exactly how we dispense with our attention.

We get the media we deserve.

At least when they were all printing physical newspapers, the publishers had no idea which headlines you were reading. Now the publishers know not to bother wasting the effort on human interest. It knows you don’t care.

When we talk about a Dumpsterfire, what we’re really talking about is the spectacle surrounding the shitshow of Donald Trump. The media wants you to think this dumpsterfire is caused by ignorant Trump supporters who would know better if only they consumed better media.

But you know what? I’m willing to bet if you checked Matt Yglesias’ tracking cookies, you’d find out he doesn’t give a shit about the poor, either.

So when I reflect on this, I consider here that maybe Liberal pundits have been morally unleashed by the advent of ubiquitous tracking. After all, publishers know that all that matters to their readers during the era of Dumpsterfire journalism are hot takes and cool tweets. Publishers know from monitoring everything us elite readers do online how little of a shit we give about housing poverty or food insecurity or medical bankruptcy or underemployment or drug epidemics or any of the concerns right now destroying the lives of the poor and fueling the rise of Trump.

Did you watch The Bachelor last night, though?

Tracking has freed journalists from the traditional concerns of journalism, which at one point included critical analysis of events. Now we suffer endless thinkpieces which go about as deeply into the social problem of white nationalism to discern that Trump’s a dumpsterfire and his supporters are all trash.

A golden age.

Consider how the press covered this week Trump’s assertion that the only way he can lose Pennsylvania is if Hillary Clinton cheats. Now, I live in Trumpland. I actually know Trump has no ground game in Pennsylvania unless you count some eccentric goons dropping off shipping containers with his face on them in parking lots of furniture stores.

But why bother to send a writer to rural Pennsylvania when you can just make a mockery of what we look like during a Trump rally on CNN? Isn’t that more efficient reporting? Saves time so staff can spend more time snapping off their Stranger Things reviews.

Who cares what white rural Pennsylvanians think? They’re trash.

Hot takes. Cool tweets.

But then you don’t have to ask difficult questions about what’s in the Dumpsterfire when you’ve decided that you’re only responsible for laughing at it.

Which is actually kind of funny when you think about it — didn’t some dead white guy once say rich people not giving a shit about the poor is always how the fire starts?