As readers — and writers we need to be wary of viral, sensational headlines (because one glass of wine does NOT equal an hour of exercise).
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(Video version available here.)
For a moment, imagine you are a content creator. You want views and shares and likes and money. To do this, you need to create content that will go viral. But to get people to share, you need a headline that really gets their attention.
We start by making some assumptions about our target audience:
1. People love drinking alcohol. For many, their poison is wine.
2. Many people are not overly fond of having to exercise.
So…
Because you are a clever content creator, you find some scientific article that speaks to those assumptions. The content of the study does not matter because it can be manipulated. Playing on those assumptions, you give the people what they want in one sensational headline. If you do your job well, it will read something like this:
“Drinking one glass of wine a day is the same as an hour of exercise.”
Boom. Instant viral hit.
But in this lies a huge problem. One that drives me insane.
It is the perfect type of headline to go viral, but it is also FALSE.
It is not your fault
The problem is that publishers care about their numbers more than they care about giving you accurate information.
Why? Because sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, but it rarely sells.
Revenues on the web are driven by clicks, especially for sites touting this kind of headline. They make money off advertising. So, the more eyes they have on their site, the more money they make.
Such headlines are referred to as “clickbait.” Meaning the headline is literally baiting you to click. They are easy to spot:
The 10 ways to xxxxx. Number 8 will blow your mind.
You will never believe what happened next.
One glass of wine equals one hour of exercise.
These headlines are so amazingly well-crafted that we often don’t even need to click to see the content it hides.
The headline is enough content in itself. But it goes deeper…
Even if you click on the link and decide to read the articles, the facts will seem to make sense. And there is even a LINK to the study, so the facts must be accurate.
Who has the time?
It is our responsibility as content creators to give you reliable information. It is your responsibility as content consumers to question everything.
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No one has time to check out every resource that is linked to in an article like the one we are discussing. Scientific articles are mind-numbingly boring and contain a lot of statistics that can be very difficult to read.
Besides, isn’t the responsibility of the site to provide you with factual information, not hype their headlines, and spend time on your behalf to make sure that what they are presenting to you is the truth?
Yes! But you still have a responsibility
So yes, some content creators are guilty of crafting deceptive headlines. But the flipside is that good content is often missed because of boring headlines. For a moment, empathize with the content creators. We need to create attention-grabbing headlines to get our content seen.
- It is our responsibility as content creators to give you reliable information.
- It is your responsibility as content consumers to question everything.
Knowing that we live in a world where we are overwhelmed with content, it is important to be careful and very picky about the content you consume.
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Just because someone says it is so, does not make it true. Knowing that we live in a world where we are overwhelmed with content, it is important to be careful and very picky about the content you consume.
I encourage you to even challenge the opinions and views I hold on BetterMan. Nothing is set in stone. We are all continuously learning. But that can only happen if we question the content we receive.
I will give you a few things you can do to make sure you do not fall into the trap of sharing utterly useless information with the rest of the world and looking like an idiot.
But first…
I promised you wine
So, let’s have a quick look at the “one glass of wine is the same as one hour of exercise” study to see what they REALLY said.
To make this quick and digestible, here are the highlights:
- The study mentions wine “once” when they describe where resveratrol is found.
- The study was done on mice. They were given resveratrol supplements. Not wine.
- Here is the kicker: The mice were given 4g of resveratrol per 1kg of bodyweight.
Let me quickly do the math for you:
- One bottle of wine contains roughly 0.012 g of resveratrol. I weigh 97kg.
- To match the levels given to the mice, I will need 388g of resveratrol a day.
- Therefore 388 g / 0.012g = 32,333 bottles of red wine a day.
Even with those ridiculous levels of resveratrol in my bloodstream, who knows what the effect on my body will be.
This is just a very basic breakdown. There are many other things to discuss regarding the study.
By the way, the actual author of the study even published a post in which he states that his research was taken out of context.
So what can you do to not share things that dumb down humanity?
- Do not trust a juicy headline.
- Sometimes reading a bit further will show you the truth.
- Choose your information sources carefully.
- Websites that thrive on virality are usually not the best place to start.
- Do not trust everything on the internet.
- Do not trust everything on the internet.