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.
Same here.
Fun fact: I was recently forced to find a new apartment.
Instead of throwing myself into the grinder that is the online rent market, I posted an ad in the local newspaper (it cost 36€).
Several landlords answered and basically told me they don’t like to look for renters online either.
After all, most landlords are senior citizens.
The apartment I found through the newspaper was much better and cheaper than anything available online.
So the way I see it, the newspaper subscription saved me around 200-300€/month for the foreseeable future.