If it bleeds... it leads.
Posting gory, scary, anger-inciting stuff made William Hearst a billionaire. BM just took a page of that well-worn and STILL EFFECTIVE playbook. If you think about it, Hearst was just the Viralnova/upworthy/Buzzfeed of his day.
If I were BM though, I'd look into building a viral site.
Step 1: Get gory / scary / anger-inciting content through social media shares (sociocaster is a good tool for sniping these)
Step 1A: Use template-driven viral headlines like the ones used at upworthy etc
Step 2: Put them up on a WP blog with a theme that 'harvests' clicks (if you joined top viral FB groups, you've seen these themes)
Step 2A: Reshare on forums / FB groups / Twitter (use popular hashtags) / Pinterest / Reddit
Step 3: Make money off CPA
Step 4: Flip that site on Flippa and repeat again.
Just thinking out loud instead of the usual "BAN BM" stuff
