Speaking of Rabbit Holes, Planning Your Life around Headlines You Read on Yahoo! News Is Probably Not a Good Idea, Either
If Olympic swimmers, telegenic binge eaters, and trite internet advice are like crack for the mentally idle, then the American news media is a drug dealer in this same extended metaphor, one that always has a way of saying, “Open up, baby bird. Here comes another juicy nugget.”
There was a seemingly innocuous headline on Yahoo! News the other day that read, “Processed food link to depression: research.” It turns out that people who eat a diet rich in whole foods are 26% less likely to suffer from depression than those who don’t, and that’s taking things like smoking and alcoholism into account. Good to know, right? Okay, but what, exactly, are we supposed to do with that information? And how would our visceral reaction to this headline have been any different if it had read, “Two fattest people I ever dated did not own socks: Ryan’s life experience?”
Suppose for a second that you’re the type of person who already eats a diet rich in whole foods or who doesn’t but thinks they probably should. Clearly, this headline’s not for you. You’d give it a passing glance, perhaps feeling a momentary tinge of self-satisfaction for seeing one of your lifestyle choices reinforced by something that comes with a dateline, but at the end of the day you’re still more likely to click on an article about how the H1N1 vaccine wants to kill your family.
Now suppose that’s not you. Suppose that you tend to eat foods that come in sleeves and cylinders when you’re bored, that you’re spending 60 bucks a month on a gym membership you’re not using that’s beginning to feel more like a fat tax, and suppose that you spend more time watching shows about cooking than actually cooking. And suppose for the sake of argument that maybe you’re a little self-aware about all this and that it makes you feel downright bad sometimes. How is a headline like “Processed food link to depression: research” going to help you feel differently? It isn’t, at least anymore than a headline about lung cancer will inspire someone to make this pack of cigarettes their last. Maybe it will make you feel a little worse, or maybe you’ll mistake “whole foods” for Whole Foods and you’ll start to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.
The news media is there to inform and entertain you, not give you advice. But in the wrong frame of mind, Lord knows that can be just as distracting. Hell, 26% of all people know that.
