Typical pattern: “Scientists find something strange when they look at a common whatever - and it’s not good!”

This kind of crap used to be the style of little blurbs at the side or the bottom of an article, but it’s in the headlines now. Until you click the headline you don’t even really know what the article is about anymore - just the general topic area, with maybe a fear trigger.

Clicking on the headline is going to display ads, but at that point the goal isn’t to get you to buy anything yet, it’s just to generate ad impressions, which the content provider gets paid for regardless of whether you even see the ads. It’s a weird meta-revenue created by the delivery mechanism, and it has altered the substance of headlines, and our expectations of what “headline” even means.

  • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world
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    25 days ago

    Predominantly? Seems to be 100% and many times they are contradicted by the article. At this point I assume a fear headline is overblown bullshit. Also health headlines are always the same crap repeated over and over.

    which the content provider gets paid for regardless of whether you even see the ads.

    I don’t understand why businesses waste their money on buying these garbage ads. Pissing away their ad dollars.

  • Darren@sopuli.xyz
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    25 days ago

    I don’t really mind clickbaity headlines, but I’m getting real tired of LIVE headlines, where instead of writing a story they just do Mastodon-style live reactions, like me getting pissed and watching Eurovision.

  • crozilla@lemmy.world
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    25 days ago

    Tell your friends and family not to fall for it then. Ad dicks will come up with something new and equally horrible.

  • jecxjo@midwest.social
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    25 days ago

    omg do i hate that. especial those commentators who want to claim something was politically devastating when we all know no one gave a shit.

  • altphoto@lemmy.today
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    25 days ago

    That’s why I stopped reading the news. Instead I get my news here and I have to interpret what they mean for me locally. Its extremely bullshit. Now orange man has bit into NPR and PBS. When that institution disappears, I won’t have a leg to stand on. I’ll be a mindless robot going to work. Suddenly they come and tag one of my balls with a chip because they said they would but nobody was there to tell us.

  • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
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    25 days ago

    “news headlines” should be “opinion headlines”. I’m going back to Jack Webb from Dragnet…“Just the facts, ma’am.”.

  • Nyticus@kbin.melroy.org
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    25 days ago

    For quite a while, yes.

    Anytime I see headlines that say “you won’t guess what’s next!” “you won’t believe this!” or any other variation is a immediate avoid.

    I think Lemmy owes itself a savedyouaclick instance.

  • ripcord@lemmy.world
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    26 days ago

    While we’re at it, does anyone on Lemmy hate capitalism? I never see anyone mention it.

    And that Trump guy is really not turning out well.

  • Raltoid@lemmy.world
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    26 days ago

    It was wild for a while, then scaled back and not it’s re-emerging with a vengance. It’s really annoying, and it’s spreading to social media. It was getting crazy on reddit, where people have gone back to literally ending titles with “And then this happened”(actually using the word “this” instead of a real descriptor).

  • Etterra@discuss.online
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    26 days ago

    Everybody has always been annoyed by them. Since before computers existed; newspaper headlines were the original clickbait and it’s always sucked.