3 ms·

The fact that "giving up Diet Coke" is "no small adjustment" for some people should be more than enough reason to never touch the stuff. No idea if there's mor

by bhaney 3y ago

The fact that "giving up Diet Coke" is "no small adjustment" for some people should be more than enough reason to never touch the stuff. No idea if there's more depth to this piece, since it's paywalled and doesn't seem interesting enough to go fetch an archive of the full story.

PaulHoule 3y ago
My public library got The Atlantic when I was a teenager and I thought it was a quality magazine but since 2010 it has pivoted towards clickbait, that headline is a great example. The Atlantic for instance was writing hand-wringing articles about “cancel culture” aimed at liberals long before Jordan Peterson, Bari Weiss and people like that made articles like that for the right a big industry. Regardless of the facts and opinions, subjects like that have huge clickbait potential.
- _delirium 3y ago
  I think the print magazine is still pretty decent, but they do do quite a bit of clickbait for the website. Seems to be an attitude of "if you can't beat them, join them". Gotta get the revenue stream to pay for the long-form journalism from somewhere, and hey, why not get some of it from vaguely liberal clickbait that'll do numbers on Twitter, instead of leaving that market completely to the bloggers. One thing I find particularly strange is when the two things collide. If you look at past submissions, you can see the HN headline often doesn't match the current headline at theatlantic.com, and the URL slug is often a remnant of a third headline. They rotate headlines even on the serious long-form pieces multiple times, presumably A/B testing what gets more clicks. So you end up with a good article that may have taken months to research and write, but saddled at the top with a series of clickbaity headlines that change every 2 hours. And the online headline often doesn't match the print headline for the same article (which obviously does not change).
beardyw 3y ago
> doesn't seem interesting enough to go fetch an archive of the full story My thoughts exactly!

by bhaney 3y ago

PaulHoule 3y ago

My public library got The Atlantic when I was a teenager and I thought it was a quality magazine but since 2010 it has pivoted towards clickbait, that headline is a great example. The Atlantic for instance was writing hand-wringing articles about “cancel culture” aimed at liberals long before Jordan Peterson, Bari Weiss and people like that made articles like that for the right a big industry. Regardless of the facts and opinions, subjects like that have huge clickbait potential.

_delirium 3y ago
I think the print magazine is still pretty decent, but they do do quite a bit of clickbait for the website. Seems to be an attitude of "if you can't beat them, join them". Gotta get the revenue stream to pay for the long-form journalism from somewhere, and hey, why not get some of it from vaguely liberal clickbait that'll do numbers on Twitter, instead of leaving that market completely to the bloggers. One thing I find particularly strange is when the two things collide. If you look at past submissions, you can see the HN headline often doesn't match the current headline at theatlantic.com, and the URL slug is often a remnant of a third headline. They rotate headlines even on the serious long-form pieces multiple times, presumably A/B testing what gets more clicks. So you end up with a good article that may have taken months to research and write, but saddled at the top with a series of clickbaity headlines that change every 2 hours. And the online headline often doesn't match the print headline for the same article (which obviously does not change).

beardyw 3y ago

> doesn't seem interesting enough to go fetch an archive of the full story My thoughts exactly!