5 ms·

This might seem like a weird thing to complain about, but am I the only person who is sick to death of headlines of the form "X just did Y"? It's the "just" I o

This might seem like a weird thing to complain about, but am I the only person who is sick to death of headlines of the form "X just did Y"? It's the "just" I object to. It seems to be some sort of trend over the last couple of years. I think it's to make it seem more dramatic or something. It just happened! My god! In this case it is especially ridiculous, since the article describes something that happened over the course of 16 months.

MattBearman 10y ago
I was just (sorry) gonna post the same thing. 'Just' and '16 months' are pretty far apart in my mind, I found the headline quite awkward to read because of it.
- d_theorist 10y ago
  Yes. I think headline writers are trying to force things into this form.
bemmu 10y ago
Maybe people like fresh things? Here's an A/B test I recently ran on some notification messages. There were two messages, only difference is the word "new" in there. A: "You received a message from the admins about your Facebook page." B: "You received a new message from the admins about your Facebook page." A clickthrough 15.64%, B clickthrough 15.95%. About 1000 samples per group. Not sure if noise.
- nothrabannosir 10y ago
  .3% on 1k? That's three people.. Yes, noise.
  - nkrisc 10y ago
    That's a great way to get a gut check on the validity of the result. Put it in real terms.
  - msellout 10y ago
    I'm often annoyed when reading reports that use percentages instead of the actual ratios. For example, "2 out of 3" is much better than "66.7%".
- pjc50 10y ago
  https://www.mccallum-layton.co.uk/tools/statistic-calculators/confidence-interval-for-proportions-calculator/ https://www.mccallum-layton.co.uk/tools/statistic-calculator... Sample Size: 1000 Observed Proportion: 15.64% Confidence Level: 95% Confidence Interval: ±2.25 Range for the true population proportion: 13.39% to 17.89% It's noise.
  - bemmu 10y ago
    Hmm, I tried playing around with this tool. When I enter 250000 in sample size I get ranges that don't overlap. Does that mean I would need that many samples to answer this?
    - cscheid 10y ago
      Yes. The bigger your sample size, the bigger your ability to see small effects. A test with 1000 elements can only tell apart big effects; a test with 250000 can tell apart much smaller ones. This is the idea of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_power
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
savanaly 10y ago
I think it's just a more casual and less formal way of saying something happened. I can't picture an illustrious newspaper of yesteryear ever writing a headline of the form "X just did Y". But due to the rise of social media and the progressive commoditization (not using either of those terms as an epithet as so many do!) of news stories, users respond better to headlines that read like it's something their friend would say rather than being the headline of a newspaper. I don't read Buzzfeed, the pioneer (I think?) of this trend, but I read the similar Polygon gaming news site, and two of its five lead stories at the moment sport conversational style headlines: "The Hearthstone legendary cards you must craft ASAP" and "The film Apocalypse could have looked like this".
- Declanomous 10y ago
  "X did Y" works equally as well as "X just did Y." I'm sure they use 'just' to make the article seem more immediate. "The Price of Solar Power fell 50% in 16 months" has a markedly different tone than "The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months". The headline with the work 'just' seems like breaking news. The other variant seems like a normal report that you can pick up an read at your leisure. Most articles in a normal newspaper don't do this because they don't have to. Only the headline needs to be sensationalist to sell the paper. On a website, every article needs to drag people in. The current headline is click-bait. That would be forgivable if the entire article wasn't terrible as well. There is very little content or analysis, everything is cribbed from other sources, including the charts. I will give the author credit for linking all of their sources, but that is where my praise ends.
maw 10y ago
You've just posted an example of the recency illusion.
mattlondon 10y ago
Its SEO/Click-bait 101 unfortunately. It is sensationalisation of something to make it sound more interesting. Next it will be "See what crazy change to solar made energy purchasers sit up pay attention!"
- mod 10y ago
  But can it be improved with a "just?" "See what crazy change to solar just made energy purchasers sit up and pay attention!"
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - d_theorist 10y ago
    You clearly have a fantastically lucrative career in annoying-headline-writing ahead of you.
    - mod 10y ago
      I'm trying to validate my product. Would you pay me $5/day for an annoying headline? "10 Crazy ways to validate your product for free that startup gurus won't tell you about!" PS: I don't know what the 10 ways are, I just write headlines.
      - coredog64 10y ago
        7's the key number here. Think about it. 7-Elevens. 7 dwarves. 7, man, that's the number. 7 chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eatin' lots of sunflowers on my uncle's ranch. You know that old children's tale from the sea. It's like you're dreamin' about Gorgonzola cheese when it's clearly Brie time, baby. Step into my office.
  - Chirael 10y ago
    "You won't believe these 3 changes that just made energy purchasers sit up and pay attention!"
draw_down 10y ago
Oh good, we can whine about this instead of talking about the issue at hand. This is HN constantly now, the top comment is some nitpick more or less totally unrelated to the topic.
- d_theorist 10y ago
  Sorry. :) I didn't intend it to become the top comment. I just finally snapped and had to express my annoyance. I guess I tapped into a lot of pent-up demand for the same thing.
- Practicality 10y ago
  Isn't that how conversations work though? At least, I know most of mine work that way. Oh, hey! That reminds me of something sort of related...
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
I came in here to complain about this same thing. Just implies a timeline much shorter than 16 mos.
- tlrobinson 10y ago
  That depends on the timeline you're comparing it to. If previously prices dropped 50% over 10 years*, then 16 months seems pretty damn fast. (I have no idea what historical prices of solar panels were)
Kluny 10y ago
Yeah, I hate it. Vote with your clicks and never touch those headlines.
coderdude 10y ago
Another bait-word is "quietly": https://hn.algolia.com/?query=quietly&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=quietly&sort=byPopularity&pref... Really gives you the impression that Facebook deprecated their API's official Python bindings in order to be evil. Otherwise, they would have formally alerted the press. "X just quietly did Y" is a thing, even: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=just%20quietly&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=just%20quietly&sort=byPopulari...
stcredzero 10y ago
Is "just" synonymous with "recently?" I wouldn't object to that adjective being in a headline.

MattBearman 10y ago

I was just (sorry) gonna post the same thing. 'Just' and '16 months' are pretty far apart in my mind, I found the headline quite awkward to read because of it.

d_theorist 10y ago
Yes. I think headline writers are trying to force things into this form.

bemmu 10y ago

Maybe people like fresh things? Here's an A/B test I recently ran on some notification messages. There were two messages, only difference is the word "new" in there. A: "You received a message from the admins about your Facebook page." B: "You received a new message from the admins about your Facebook page." A clickthrough 15.64%, B clickthrough 15.95%. About 1000 samples per group. Not sure if noise.

nothrabannosir 10y ago
.3% on 1k? That's three people.. Yes, noise.
- nkrisc 10y ago
  That's a great way to get a gut check on the validity of the result. Put it in real terms.
- msellout 10y ago
  I'm often annoyed when reading reports that use percentages instead of the actual ratios. For example, "2 out of 3" is much better than "66.7%".
pjc50 10y ago
https://www.mccallum-layton.co.uk/tools/statistic-calculators/confidence-interval-for-proportions-calculator/ https://www.mccallum-layton.co.uk/tools/statistic-calculator... Sample Size: 1000 Observed Proportion: 15.64% Confidence Level: 95% Confidence Interval: ±2.25 Range for the true population proportion: 13.39% to 17.89% It's noise.
- bemmu 10y ago
  Hmm, I tried playing around with this tool. When I enter 250000 in sample size I get ranges that don't overlap. Does that mean I would need that many samples to answer this?
  - cscheid 10y ago
    Yes. The bigger your sample size, the bigger your ability to see small effects. A test with 1000 elements can only tell apart big effects; a test with 250000 can tell apart much smaller ones. This is the idea of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_power
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]

savanaly 10y ago

I think it's just a more casual and less formal way of saying something happened. I can't picture an illustrious newspaper of yesteryear ever writing a headline of the form "X just did Y". But due to the rise of social media and the progressive commoditization (not using either of those terms as an epithet as so many do!) of news stories, users respond better to headlines that read like it's something their friend would say rather than being the headline of a newspaper. I don't read Buzzfeed, the pioneer (I think?) of this trend, but I read the similar Polygon gaming news site, and two of its five lead stories at the moment sport conversational style headlines: "The Hearthstone legendary cards you must craft ASAP" and "The film Apocalypse could have looked like this".

Declanomous 10y ago
"X did Y" works equally as well as "X just did Y." I'm sure they use 'just' to make the article seem more immediate. "The Price of Solar Power fell 50% in 16 months" has a markedly different tone than "The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months". The headline with the work 'just' seems like breaking news. The other variant seems like a normal report that you can pick up an read at your leisure. Most articles in a normal newspaper don't do this because they don't have to. Only the headline needs to be sensationalist to sell the paper. On a website, every article needs to drag people in. The current headline is click-bait. That would be forgivable if the entire article wasn't terrible as well. There is very little content or analysis, everything is cribbed from other sources, including the charts. I will give the author credit for linking all of their sources, but that is where my praise ends.

maw 10y ago

You've just posted an example of the recency illusion.

mattlondon 10y ago

Its SEO/Click-bait 101 unfortunately. It is sensationalisation of something to make it sound more interesting. Next it will be "See what crazy change to solar made energy purchasers sit up pay attention!"

mod 10y ago
But can it be improved with a "just?" "See what crazy change to solar just made energy purchasers sit up and pay attention!"
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- d_theorist 10y ago
  You clearly have a fantastically lucrative career in annoying-headline-writing ahead of you.
  - mod 10y ago
    I'm trying to validate my product. Would you pay me $5/day for an annoying headline? "10 Crazy ways to validate your product for free that startup gurus won't tell you about!" PS: I don't know what the 10 ways are, I just write headlines.
    - coredog64 10y ago
      7's the key number here. Think about it. 7-Elevens. 7 dwarves. 7, man, that's the number. 7 chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eatin' lots of sunflowers on my uncle's ranch. You know that old children's tale from the sea. It's like you're dreamin' about Gorgonzola cheese when it's clearly Brie time, baby. Step into my office.
- Chirael 10y ago
  "You won't believe these 3 changes that just made energy purchasers sit up and pay attention!"

draw_down 10y ago

Oh good, we can whine about this instead of talking about the issue at hand. This is HN constantly now, the top comment is some nitpick more or less totally unrelated to the topic.

d_theorist 10y ago
Sorry. :) I didn't intend it to become the top comment. I just finally snapped and had to express my annoyance. I guess I tapped into a lot of pent-up demand for the same thing.
Practicality 10y ago
Isn't that how conversations work though? At least, I know most of mine work that way. Oh, hey! That reminds me of something sort of related...

JustSomeNobody 10y ago

I came in here to complain about this same thing. Just implies a timeline much shorter than 16 mos.

tlrobinson 10y ago
That depends on the timeline you're comparing it to. If previously prices dropped 50% over 10 years*, then 16 months seems pretty damn fast. (I have no idea what historical prices of solar panels were)

Kluny 10y ago

Yeah, I hate it. Vote with your clicks and never touch those headlines.

coderdude 10y ago

Another bait-word is "quietly": https://hn.algolia.com/?query=quietly&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=quietly&sort=byPopularity&pref... Really gives you the impression that Facebook deprecated their API's official Python bindings in order to be evil. Otherwise, they would have formally alerted the press. "X just quietly did Y" is a thing, even: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=just%20quietly&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=just%20quietly&sort=byPopulari...

stcredzero 10y ago

Is "just" synonymous with "recently?" I wouldn't object to that adjective being in a headline.