The Culture in Montréal

So I’m one of those poor fools who still gets his news via RSS.

As an aside, the obligatory: we mourn Google Reader.

As another aside, if you know of a better reader than Feedly (“better” in this case meaning less biz-pilled AI nonsense but still decent UI/UX across browser & mobile), let me know.

Anyway, one of my main follows is Cult MTL, which spun out of the failing Montreal Mirror back in 2012. In all that time, it’s been a dependable source for festivals, food, events, music, making fun of NIMBYs, and reporting on our systemically-racist provincial government.

So: culture, in Montréal. Unsurprising given the name, and it’s right there on their About page:

Cult MTL is a daily web and monthly print publication focusing on Montreal culture.

At some point though – I think roughly coinciding with the pandemic – I started noticing strange articles popping up in the Cult MTL feed. Articles stretching the definition of the word “culture”; articles very explicitly about not-Montréal. I’ve documented a number of them below (with Internet Archive backups).

Oddly (or, more likely, intentionally), you won’t find these on the site’s front page – they seem to be accessible only via direct links, buried like some shameful secret (correct).

I suspect what’s happening is that these (probably AI-generated?) articles are being stacked up in the site’s back end, out of public sight, in a cynical play for SEO, to boost the overall search ranking of the site as a whole. Does it work? Who knows how any of this works. All I know is that, seemingly, the mere fact of squeezing this dross through a CMS and onto the internet means it ends up in my RSS feed, and maybe nowhere else.

Such is culture in Montréal.

montrealers love Mr Bet Casino Canada.