October 13, 2004

No Title (Except this one)
   by jhyde

I've been away for awhile, so I haven't been religiously checking the 'list my stories' page for new hits (oh shut up you all know you do it). So I wandered onto the page and lo and behold I've got two fairly popular stories, mostly due to their cool titles, while the content, however, is rather questionable. I'm beginning to wonder if titles are everything in the mag, blog, periodical world. "Mushrooms: Curing Cancer, Fighting Disease", "Does Sex Make you Younger?" or "10 Easy Ways to Spark a New Romance". Is this what the world has been reduced to? MSN.com regularly exploits this phenomenon with such catch titles I can't stop myself from clicking on them. I applaud Mike with his "McAnnoying" title (which no doubt got more hits than my MickeyD's - pfffft!). Just recently while perusing a St. Paul newspaper I ran across something like: "School Board Decision Labored, Lengthy; Everyone Wonders Why" It was a title even Quoyle could be proud of and if anyone has read The Shipping News they know what I'm talking about. I just don't now why we are so connected with "Lava Oozes Out of Mount St. Helens" (thanks Reuters!) and not "Wallet Left on Bridge Found". Huh? Titles really are everything when it comes to notoriety, but I'd like to think that as consumers of mass literature we're a bit deeper than that. Never judge a book by it's cover, an article by it's title or a website by it's front page. That's a rule to live by, and yet, we'd rather click on "Find the Right Laptop" than "Community Meeting Went Well".

Published: November 1, 2004
Editor: stacy