SPOILER ALERT: The following sounds suspiciously like a rant.
I’m a news junkie. I try to keep up. I follow food, health and medicine; war, catastrophes and disasters; writing and publishing; business, finance & investments; and baseball. Too many so-called “news articles” these days waste my time.
Many articles deliberately don’t get to the point until one has scrolled through endless paragraphs of detailed background. While the background is usually quite worthwhile, it suits me better to have it slotted after the advertised point as I’m usually already aware of the background. Too many articles never get to the advertised point, they just ramble. Click bait still occasionally lures me into opening new tabs with endless advertisements for whatever I don’t need, but I’m wising up about them. And bait and switch articles promise specific items of interest but never deliver. And then there is the recent plethora of articles that inform me of each and every freaking thing the well-meaning author assumes that I’m doing wrong.
For example, a fictional headline might read: “ONE HUNDRED MISTAKES YOU MAKE COOKING POTATOES!” I naively figure that given a veritable landslide of instructions to follow, at least a few will prove worthwhile, but, no! Each and every one turns out to be far too simplistic. Only a complete dolt would make such idiotic mistakes… like cooking a potato that has obviously been invaded by a big fat wiggly worm. Come on, guys. Give your readers credit for possessing a modicum of common sense!
Stop wasting our time.
Sorry… I couldn’t help myself. It was indeed a rant.