Yahoo News: Making You Dumber

[aggienaut]

   My main email address is at yahoo, and as a consequence of this I happen across the yahoo main page every day. And as such, I am subjected to their ideas of what is "headline news" every day ... and it's frequently blisteringly inane and stupid.
   At this moment it is "Celebs who called it quits in 2011." A little earlier (and still displayed in bold and much more prominently than any real news) it was "Mark Zuckerburg's Holiday Vacation." Apparently he went to Vietnam. And rode an ox. And we should be shocked because Vietnam is a communist country. Or, as the story's second sentence informs us "The Facebook founder is vacationing in the communist country that blocks its citizen from using his social networking site." Oh really, they only have one citizen?
   The article was kind of like a train wreck (or the Family Circus cartoon), where I just kept reading it to see just how bad it was (family circus is particularly insidious because all it takes is one careless glance towards it on the page and you've gone and accidentally read the whole thing).

   Another news item that kind of alarmed me today was "Ex-Aid: Ron Paul Foreign Policy is 'sheer lunacy'," not, in this case, because it's not relevant, but because its so biased. Don't get me wrong, Ron Paul has some stances many might find unsavory (he's very pro-life for example), and many that are radical no matter how you look at it (he wants to eliminate a whole bunch of government agencies), but I believe the media should report his stances for what they are and not try to tell us how sheerly lunatic we should think they are.
   Granted the article is quoting someone in saying that, still the "sheer lunacy" quote is very prominently in the headline, and in the conclusion the source's conclusion of "simply outrageously horrendous views on foreign policy" is once again prominently displayed.
   Yes, I disagree with the policies the article alleges he supports (that Israel should be abolished and we never should have gone to war in Afghanistan), but I think an article yahoo displays on their front page ought to let us make our own conclusions about whether those are "simply outrageous" policies. The article also does not include any comments from the Ron Paul campaign about whether or not he actually supports the policies alleged, which is a pretty important piece of information.


   In conclusion, here's a totally unrelated picture I took of my coworker hanging out with a tarantula hawk:

Comments

[hey-its-michael.livejournal.com]

Yahoo! News is the armpit of news reporting. The only thing worse than the quality of the articles contained therein are the comments people make to them in anonymity. NEVER READ THE COMMENTS! lol

[hosticle-fifer.livejournal.com]

This in-depth Yahoo article about the 9-5 workday recently hit Fark. Seriously, read that. Truly the blistering edge of modern journalism.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

I had to reload the page several times to make sure it wasn't just loading wrong. The comments are actually pretty funny.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Yeah my boss always reads the comments, they're usually so utterly stupid that reading them seems like some kind of mental masochism to me.

Though some of the comments to the yahoo article that hosticle_fifer linked to below are actually pretty funny

[ryl.livejournal.com]

Poetry. Pure poetry distilled to its finest essence.

[ryl.livejournal.com]

That wasp is entirely too large. It's prehistoric-sized.

*reads linked entry* Have you seen the jungle episode of "Planet Earth"? There's a part in there about fungus that kills insects like tarantula hawks' eggs do. I wouldn't want to be an insect--there are too many horrible ways to die if you are one.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Oh yes there are fungii that zombify insects!

[morlith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have a Yahoo account too. The media is going after Paul because he actually has a bunch of support this time around. They're attacking him now because ignoring him didn't work.

Holy cow, that is a hyyyoooooooooge bug! Neato! Thanks for sharing!

[rugbybaby.livejournal.com]

I find Yahoo news amusing, but that's about it. I fully support the title of this post.

[colt-4-5.livejournal.com]

i wouldnt want to get on his bad side !! looks like it packs a powerful punch.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Well yes if his policies were actually implemented it would -- oh wait you're talking about the wasp (well the INSECT wasp) ;D

[colt-4-5.livejournal.com]

haha. Have you ever been stung by something like that?

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Nope! It's supposed to be very very very painful ... but since it doesn't do any actual damage I'm kind of a little bit curious.. O_O

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

And today yahoo has yet another Ron Paul article, that actually cites some of the counter-arguments which say he's not racist ... and then ends with a link to their earlier article that was talking up the newsletters.

I think a lot of his policies are inadvisable but I like him as a hilarious wrench-in-the-system ;D

[hey-its-michael.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the apparent intelligence level of the average Yahoo commentator has me fearing for the future of our species.

However, those comments are pretty funny. Sarcasm on the Internet is the best form of expression. lol