Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source

hu-berlin.de

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 93 posts

Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source

#71

Post by backing »

jackvalentine wrote: post #59
crmd wrote: post #13

The only solution is not to engage with emotionally manipulative content. Even, for example, with nerdy YouTube channels that I love, if a video shows up in my feed: * with a title $villain $unflattering_third_person_present_verb $something * with the format $hero $flattering_third_person_present_verb $something * a person in the thumbnail making an o-face[1] for any reason Then I simply don’t click on it. [1] https:…

I love this extension for making YouTube less horrible. It removes the thumbnails and returns to 'frame from the video'. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clickbait-rem...

Thank you

Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source

#72

Post by justin66 »

forgingahead wrote: post #64
justin66 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might be a good strategy for dealing with youtube videos but it's not an equally good strategy for dealing with print media. The thing to remember about magazine or newspaper articles is that the author does not typically have any input on what the headline will be. A great article by a great author will quite often get a ridiculous headline from an editor, for all the bad reasons an editor might have: baiting t…

The best thing then is to ignore/block print media as well. Legacy media institutions have destroyed their credibility because of this race to the bottom - for a brief moment in history, there was a nice thought that the subscription revenue model would allow more fair and balanced reporting compared to the ad-revenue models (since they wouldn't need clickbait headlines/stories). Turns out that people don't want to p…

You’ll have to put some effort into evaluating the media you use, whether or not you believe freelancers are better equipped to be effective.

> those of us who really would like to know what is going on have no clue what is true or not any longer.

Well yeah, if this is your policy:

> The best thing then is to ignore/block print media as well

You’re not going to have any idea what is going on.

A vigorous application of this rejection of legacy media is going to have you completely ignoring sources that are pretty easy to parse, like AP or Reuters newsfeeds. It’s worthwhile to develop the skills needed to use those sorts of things and understand their limits, rather than ignoring them completely. You can get value from media without being completely credulous about what any one source is reporting.

Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source

#73

Post by darig »

This article got everything completely wrong. Responding to headlines with comments denying the premise, while having never read the article, has the largest impact regardless of the credibility of the source.

Everyone knows that. There is more of an impact if you say everyone knows that, and things like "largest". Everyone knows that.

Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source

#74

Post by thelittleone »

crmd wrote: post #13

The only solution is not to engage with emotionally manipulative content. Even, for example, with nerdy YouTube channels that I love, if a video shows up in my feed: * with a title $villain $unflattering_third_person_present_verb $something * with the format $hero $flattering_third_person_present_verb $something * a person in the thumbnail making an o-face[1] for any reason Then I simply don’t click on it. [1] https:…

Australia news sites favorite words: "terrifying", "chilling", "tragic", "sinister", "slammed". It's almost as if there's an editor imposed target / quota for excessively emotional words on the first page.

Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source

#75

Post by FartyMcFarter »

One corollary is that you should completely block news sources that have the most emotional headlines. Google News has a feature for blocking specific sources, fortunately.

I had done this out of irritation with crappy articles. Bad articles seem to be correlated with emotionally manipulative headlines, so it's interesting to find out that there are other good reasons to do it!

Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source

#77

Post by the_pwner224 »

fabatka wrote: post #44
crmd wrote: post #13

The only solution is not to engage with emotionally manipulative content. Even, for example, with nerdy YouTube channels that I love, if a video shows up in my feed: * with a title $villain $unflattering_third_person_present_verb $something * with the format $hero $flattering_third_person_present_verb $something * a person in the thumbnail making an o-face[1] for any reason Then I simply don’t click on it. [1] https:…

Is there a youtube client (or browser extension) that accepts a whitelist of channels and only shows videos from those? This got me thinking... A browser extension deleting everything from the front page except videos from the given channels might not even be that complicated. Hm, I might end up creating a simple extension like this... Edit: Sorry for being OT

NewPipe can do this on Android. Search for your channels, click the subscribe button, then on the home screen of the app there's a tab with the chronological list of videos from your subscriptions. You can hide the YouTube trending tab from the home screen, and within videos you can swipe between comments & suggested/related videos, so you don't lose discovery of new content.

Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source

#78

Post by freeflight »

crmd wrote: post #13

The only solution is not to engage with emotionally manipulative content. Even, for example, with nerdy YouTube channels that I love, if a video shows up in my feed: * with a title $villain $unflattering_third_person_present_verb $something * with the format $hero $flattering_third_person_present_verb $something * a person in the thumbnail making an o-face[1] for any reason Then I simply don’t click on it. [1] https:…

But if just reading the headline is already having an emotional impact, as the source claims, then even that method won't change much as you will still be exposed to the title.

Which presents kind of an difficult problem: You won't know if an headline is emotional without actually reading it, but once you read it, and it turns out to be emotional, you will already be affected.

Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source

#79

Post by nine_k »

freeflight wrote: post #78
crmd wrote: post #13

The only solution is not to engage with emotionally manipulative content. Even, for example, with nerdy YouTube channels that I love, if a video shows up in my feed: * with a title $villain $unflattering_third_person_present_verb $something * with the format $hero $flattering_third_person_present_verb $something * a person in the thumbnail making an o-face[1] for any reason Then I simply don’t click on it. [1] https:…

But if just reading the headline is already having an emotional impact, as the source claims, then even that method won't change much as you will still be exposed to the title. Which presents kind of an difficult problem: You won't know if an headline is emotional without actually reading it, but once you read it, and it turns out to be emotional, you will already be affected.

Developing the faculty to emotionally detach from things you read or see, and stay level-headed, is useful across one's entire life. Doctors, first responders, and other people who face extreme situations develop it to be able to do their jobs.

But it's not out of reach for a person who just practices it consciously. This is not about removing your emotions, it's about letting your mind observe the flow of emotions, and still stay and act sober.

Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source

#80

Post by vkou »

forgingahead wrote: post #64
justin66 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might be a good strategy for dealing with youtube videos but it's not an equally good strategy for dealing with print media. The thing to remember about magazine or newspaper articles is that the author does not typically have any input on what the headline will be. A great article by a great author will quite often get a ridiculous headline from an editor, for all the bad reasons an editor might have: baiting t…

The best thing then is to ignore/block print media as well. Legacy media institutions have destroyed their credibility because of this race to the bottom - for a brief moment in history, there was a nice thought that the subscription revenue model would allow more fair and balanced reporting compared to the ad-revenue models (since they wouldn't need clickbait headlines/stories). Turns out that people don't want to p…

> Legacy media institutions have destroyed their credibility because of this race to the bottom

Sure, but the new crop of media that we've seen arise in the past couple of years isn't objectively better - it's just wretched in different ways.

Post reply on HN