• I’m quite familiar with Betteridge. Strict adherence gets to your question; the larger issue, as with anything, is that so many question heds have been posed where the answer is “no” that it became a “law.”

      In journalism, there are problems that showed up far earlier than clickbait question heds, such as garden-path or irrelevant ledes. I’ve written and run question heds that were correct display copy atop stories in which the reporter tried to find an answer but couldn’t given conflicting information from sources. At that point, the correct approach is a question.

      Question heds atop stories that definitively disprove the question are lazy at best and disingenuous at worst. But to categorically remove a form of hed writing as valid based on statistics or anecdotal data isn’t an improvement.

  • Gee, the wealth gap is even wider now than it was in the days of the robber barons, but I dunno… maybe I’m just making myself sad.

    I mean, what does this author want us to do? Reframe every horror as “Well, it ain’t that bad.” until we’re onboard with shrugging off the murder of children school, the murder of trans children, the murder of children in gaza, the homelessness of anyone, etc.

  • Is that an economist url?.. yeah, no, not clicking that.

    Typically the “financial type media”, are full of political opinion instead of focusing on finance. Very often bad takes, and over the years, I’ve learned they just aren’t worth a click, and my time.

  • Research has found liberals to be more empathetic than conservatives, so in a troubled world one might expect them to be sadder. But a profound shift appears to be under way when it comes to excitement about change. “One of the fundamental traits of the conservative attitude is a fear of change, a timid distrust of the new as such,” wrote Friedrich Hayek in “The Constitution of Liberty” in 1960, “while the liberal position is based on courage and confidence, on a preparedness to let change run its course.”

    of course we’re not excited about change… shit’s getting worse

  • “Conservatives seem more excited about change.”

    No, conservatives seem excited about changing as much back to the way it was before. Progressives are sad because un-doing progress is significantly easier and faster than making progress.