There were a lot of articles describing Snowdon / Manning and Wikileaks releases as exactly "nothing burgers", in those journals of note that people read to tell them what to think about matters - but I'm not sure what a "nothing burger" means - pulverised cattle flesh flattened into an oval, that doesn't exist?

Is there a term for this weird autistic pseudo-nerd-sniping where someone pretends not to understand a very common expression and takes it absurdly literally to try to prove a point?

The validity of the term should be separate from the pernicious use by people who would like you to stop paying attention to things that matter.

I think there’s lots of stuff in this space that is worth paying attention to, including for example just how complete a profile companies like Experian have assembled on US citizens, or Flock and LPR generally.

This just seems a lot of fluff with nothing substantial, hence a nothingburger.