Gig alert: Troll the world on the Times’ social media desk

You spend so much time on Facebook and Twitter, isn’t it about time you actually got to count them as a job skill? Well now you can, because the New York Times needs someone to step in and work at their social media department for the next six months. You’ll be responsible for helping churn out stories that “engage readers,” and you know what that means: get to trolling.

As the social media staff editor, your job duties will be things like spreading “knowledge of social media, crowdsourcing and reader engagement techniques” and helping to think of “creative new ways to tell stories using public voice and engage Times readers.” Which to us, sounds like a very high-minded way of telling people they’ll be tasked with thinking of story ideas like the next “Snow Fall” or even better, coming up with ridiculous, shareable Style section pitches like “TK Brooklyn” and “Something something, Millennials.” After all, unless you’re Upworthy, trolling gets you the reader engagement (extra page views from angry comments, exasperated Facebook shares) that everyone’s chasing these days.

Of course, there are worse things than trolling the world for New York Times. There’s not having a job at all, for instance. Or there’s doing it for the Post. We can all agree we’d rather be dead than do that, right?

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