Hacker News Reader

Comment by apatters | Hacker News Reader

I clicked mainly because the clickbaitiness of the headline annoyed me and I wanted to inform myself a bit before complaining about it. The NYT rewarded me by telling me I have one less free article this month. That annoyed me even more so I hit back.

They are very smart over there, and the NYT didn't get where it is thanks to short term thinking. Surely they have thought about what a bad experience clickbait is and how much it damages their brand.

View on HN

I'm a little confused by this comment- I was under the impression that the title is pretty accurate to drastic decrease in insect population recorded in multiple studies. Apocalyptic wouldn't be an exaggeration given the studies I've read (>=75% insect loss). If 75% or more of the human population declined over 30 years, I'd be pretty confident that it'd be catastrophic to human society.

Except that there is no such thing as the (global) "insect society."

There is, however, a global insect ecosystem. And other ecosystems are dependent on it, including ours.

thats the premise of the next big sci-fi hit.

Newspapers have been writing attention-getting headlines since there were newspapers. The problem with clickbait is when the article doesn’t support the headline. Arguably, in this case, the headline is true.

I would say that clickbait is where the headline is designed to draw people in without giving them information. A well written headline gives you the most important part of the story. A clickbait headline deliberately avoids it. Consider the stereotypical “one weird trick!” clickbait. It avoids telling you what it is, so you have to click to find out.

This headline gives you the most pertinent fact up front. You can skip the story and still have some knowledge of what’s being discussed. It’s the opposite of clickbait.

I love that 90% of the top comments on hn are people complaining about website design. Extremely relevant and not at all boring.

I mean, this is a forum filled with web developers...

This is silly, but in some ways the design and flaws of major news and content sites is a topic more relevant/interesting to a discussion forum for hackers than ongoing environmental collapse is.

Sure, the latter is a much bigger deal and affects hackers as much as it affects all life on Earth.

But doctors talk about medicine and care. Teachers talk about education and learning. Hackers talk about design, UX, etc.

We should all be talking about ecosystem collapse. Yet it's not a thing we interact with every day (yet), whereas NY Times' paywall is.

Human brains are lousy at risk, it's true.

Clear your cookies.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com