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this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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I wrote out a very angry reply, but as often happens, as I cooled down and reflected, it was 100% the result of this enormously clickbait title, not the article itself.
The article itself DOES mention the mortgage rates, and it DOES acknowledge that Boomers might be willing to move out (in direct contradiction to its own title) but cannot bc of a shortage of affordable smaller homes, the same as everyone else.
In short, Boomers are trapped too - again it's not that they "won't" so much as they "can't" - even if sitting better in a home that they (hopefully) own rather than having to rent.
There is simply no excuse for such a rage-baiting, purposefully combative title.:-( Maybe we need to start using AI to generate new titles to replace those profit-mongering ones? :-)
One of the rules of this community is you must use the same title for your post as the news article title.
So now we have quite a few clickbait & ragebait titles, because that's what the corps are doing. Pretty dumb rule, IMO.
Rules can change, but mainly I mean that we need to be the change we want to see in the world. e.g. maybe not even allow articles labeled as "news" that are meant only to distract our attention away from corporations' profit margins, being written by conservative right-wing propaganda arms of the media such as [checks notes] "CNN". Well... shit.
Yes, some kind of minimum standard would be good.
On piefed.social there are over 3000 domains that cannot be linked to, including all the alt-right propaganda ones. Brietbart, Russia Today, etc. I wouldn't go as far as including CNN in that list though.
To clarify: I was being mostly tongue-in-cheek on that part. Most of the time you do not associate "CNN" with "right-wing propaganda", as while it may not be entirely unbiased it does not lie so far on the spectrum as to deserve that label of "propaganda". Or at least it has not been that way in the past?
The cussing at the end though was to indicate my absolute surprise at finding that this article is now contributing towards its inching closer to earning that distinction though. Or at least the title of this article accomplishes that effect, even though the content itself does not. Also, I noticed that this is not an "opinion" piece, nor at the end do they have a disclaimer that the views of the author may not necessarily reflect that of the journal - so this seems fully supported by the editorial staff at CNN Business?
Fwiw, I wonder if they even care which political direction it pushes people towards - so long as it makes people angry, their profits increase by people clicking on it?
Ofc I agree that CNN Business is not as far advanced along the propaganda spectrum as those others you listed (in those, the content itself would be biased as well)... but neither is CNN Business unbiased either, apparently. Just look at how many incendiary words & phrases are used - they "won't part" (like a toddler holding a toy?), the direct interpretation that "that's a problem", the "think of the children" tactic, not calling them "Generation Baby Boomer" or some such but the almost pejorative these days "Boomers", and using right out of the gate as almost a verb like BOOM those old farts did another thing again, now click to find out why you should be angry!? (which itself, like propaganda tends to do, implies the never-ending NOW that is all that is assumed to ever matter to the reader, not "this is happening lately" or "there is a trend showing up recently", but "[THEY] WON'T PART", as if that stage will continue forever without some inertia-stopping force to stop this "problem for young families" - a force that will demand ACTION? which btw is what drives the urge to click the article, b/c otherwise mere information delivery could allow someone to read the title and move on with their lives, but no, this article must be CLICKED, IMMEDIATELY!) Later, the article itself softens this heavy pushing of phrases considerably - e.g. note the switch inside to now "Baby Boomers", and putting transition words in front of it to shift the focus away from them and more on the nature of the underlying transitioning effect itself (e.g. "Meanwhile, Baby Boomers...", as in a process that is currently underway, over the course of some period of time, rather than the "BOOMERS WON'T PART" in more active, and urgent, voice).
So... from the title alone, it sure looks an awful lot like propaganda to me? I hope to see less of this from CNN Business in the future, but if instead I see more then I will have to update my view on where they stand on that spectrum. Again, at least in reference to their titles as separate from the actual article content.
Thank you for this chance to vent btw, and your perspective does help clarify matters.:-)
Yes, great analysis.
Someone on fedi somewhere recently said "if the article makes you scared or angry, you're probably being manipulated".
It sounds like a fantastic rule of thumb. To be fair, it is REALLY hard to make use of language in a way that engenders zero emotional response on behalf of the recipient - and why would you want to even?
Unfortunately, when that emotional response later turns into disappointment after learning that it was fake, you develop a pattern of distrusting whomever it was that made you feel that way. Which at this point is almost EVERY major corporation, especially the formerly "news" ones?!
e.g., I recall feeling sick upon learning that Donald Trump had sex with a 14-year-old (at the time) girl. Even though I was being, um... "encouraged" to feel that way... I do not regret that emotion, nor distrust who sold me that story, to the extent that those facts are accurate? (based on her own testimony, which she said she was willing to swear to in a court of law, and she provided details that supposedly were corroborated, at least enough to place her at one of those parties, yes run by Epstein, where that occurred - e.g. there was an actual photo of her + DT standing together iirc; which I note that even if she faked a portion of the story, the news media source itself seems like they had done their due diligence at that point)
Whereas for the OP article I feel far more "betrayed", by its title, seeking to place blame solely onto baby boomers who are stuck in their giant empty homes due to the mortgage rates & housing availability situation - which they themselves may not feel is optimal (higher costs of heating / cooling for one) - rather than on the real sources that are causing the actual "problems" that the title alluded to. But live & learn - and from now on I will know to heavily distrust any article coming forth from CNN, which I find so incredibly sad, but like the housing crisis itself, is simply the unfortunate truth nowadays:-(.
Fortunately it's not quite as bad as Brietbart, at least not yet...:-(
Yeah, it's tricky. There is a point where a headline becomes deceiving and it's very hard to pinpoint where that is. I like your AI idea and will do some experiments along those lines.
I would say that if something, anything - a title, the article itself, etc. - informs, then it is useful, while if it MISLEADS then it becomes... the opposite. Right? In computer science, as I am guessing you are aware, that term even has the special name of a "worst-case scenario", being by far and above more damning than an average- or best-case one, and which has extremely important security and other considerations.
The title describes 2 active agents - boomers vs. young families - and sets them up in an adversarial capacity, even placing them at opposing ends of the sentence, connected together with "homes" and "problem". Btw, tbh I am aware that I may be thinking about this title more than the author themselves did, but even if so that does not negate the "strategy" involved - e.g. a spider puts out its web without any thought whatsoever, yet it still works, i.e., whether through the blind natural processes of thoughts evolving such that those that survive tend to be propagated while those that fail tend to be left behind. Anyway, ARE baby boomers and young families adversaries in this "fight", or is this yet another instance of the tactic of "controlling the conversation" - a tactic nowhere near pioneered by the Alt-Right, yet used to great effect by them lately nonetheless?
Which begs the question: if this media source, owned by extraordinarily wealthy people who live lives so disconnected and above the rest of us that the vast majority of us will literally never meet one during the course of our entire lives, is trying to pit boomers vs. young families against one another, what could they possibly hope to gain? Especially at the cost of journalistic integrity, that they used to uphold?! (or at least make the appearance of that anyway) Could it be that the owner(s) of CNN, or their friends, has & continues to make a TON of money by buying up real estate? i.e., I am saying that there are not merely 2 active agents here: there is a 3rd! (but one that this title is going to some trouble to hide away, by distracting us in pointing us towards the two other sides) This 3rd one, (purposefully?) not mentioned at all by this title, is the one causing all of those "problems"! Therefore in effect, it is really the prime agent even, hence arguably the one that was most worth mentioning in the first place? As in this alternative titling: "the wealthy tying up the housing market harms empty-nest baby boomers & young families alike, in different ways". You can imagine this in graph form as the prime agent with arrows pointing to each of the other 2, while the OG title ignores the prime agent entirely and substitutes the two arrows with a subtle & singular arrow from the baby boomers towards the young families - b/c SOMEBODY has to be causing these "problems", right? And if it is not the fault of the young families... why then, who else even exists that could be to blame, hrm....?!? Hence the active verbage there "Boomers WON'T PART", as I mentioned earlier like they are having some kind of dementia-addled temper tantrum akin to that of a toddler, who just needs the real adults (the "young families"... b/c that is the only other agent that exists, right?) to step up and do the right thing, perhaps convincing or even just simply to take it from them. When in reality the REAL, prime agent, who has an "in" with the media source, gets off scott-free of blame.
Fortunately, AI is a powerful tool, and while I think it will ultimately do a great deal of harm to our society (meh, the same as everything else though - like nukes, gunpowder, probably even fire itself originally:-D), it can also be used for great good as well, depending on how the user chooses to wield it. Thus I wish you luck in that endeavor! I will say that its victory may be short-lived though, as the success of titles such as these will only serve to embolden those who would push for their existence in the first place, and thus surely the content of the articles themselves at CNN will start to be affected next. i.e. AI can certainly be trained to replace the titles (possibly sometimes to hilarious effects, but likely quite useful often enough?), but until it is ready to replace the entire content of the article as well, filling in gaps by doing first-hand research even, it will never solve the problem of preventing us from being harmed by misinformation. Not that that makes it not worth doing - it could be fun, and even a help purely in the short-term is still a help, so yeah, I wish you luck!:-D
I'm here to say thank you for keeping your cool on the internet despite the clickbait and somewhat ragebait headline.
This definitely helps make the Fediverse a nicer place.
Thank you for the thanks, and sorry that someone is downvoting you even for saying that much. At this point I think I'll start wearing my downvotes as a matter of pride ~~just like on ole Reddit~~. I would very much like it if the Fediverse would be cleaner and nicer than where we left, so indeed that starts with myself.:-)