I Am Begging Websites To Remember They Are Read By Human Beings, Who Possess At Least Some Small Amount Of Dignity

As you may be aware, the internet is slowly killing the old media business model of letting you read a website for free and covering said website in ads. Those few websites that remain are finding themselves caught in a never-ending struggle to adapt to an ever-changing landscape, one where the death of ad sales and the rise of AI search results have upended everything they once thought they knew about running a business.

As someone who spent a long time in that line of work, and a decent chunk of that time writing crap to attract social media clicks because it made ownership happy, I have nothing but the utmost sympathy for every writer and editor still working at a major masthead who is being encouraged (or even forced) to do annoying stuff to keep the lights on.

Everyone pushing those changes on them, though, from the moron owners of their publications through to the ad and tech executives ultimately responsible for stuff like AI search results, can get in the bin. The smallest and stinkiest bin, though, should be reserved for whoever across Valnet’s sites have brought us to the point in time where we are being shown headlines like this on their stable of websites:

I've complained about impenetrable headlines before, but there's clickbait and then there's whatever the fuck this is. Who in their right mind is describing (or searching for) the Second World War series SAS: Rogue Heroes by its studio creators or cumulative review score?

That Polygon headline is just the tip of a modern internet-shaped iceberg. Look how far you have to get into the story before the movie the article is actually talking about is mentioned:

The film in question is finally revealed after that Tom Holland video, and the movie is...Sicario? Fucking Sicario?!?! It's not a Western! Bernthal isn't even the star of that movie, he's like 5th or 6th billing!!! Why is the story framed this way, with its runtime and review average in the headline but not the name of the movie or even the main stars included? This is a Benecio Del Toro and Josh Brolin film!

Is it because Bernthal is in the new Spider-Man, and Sheridan also has something to do with that? No, Taylor Sheridan fucking hates Marvel movies! He called Spider-Man out specifically in a recent rant on Bill Simmons' podcast!

Many of Valnet's sites have started using these kinds of headlines in recent months, all of them failing to mention the film or show or game in question, but instead listing things like runtime, number of seasons and/or community ratings. It's a bizarre thing to see repeated once you've seen it once.

I don't work in SEO, so I can't speak definitively as to why these headlines are being crafted in this very specific way. Maybe it's to try to get a search engine to list the blog as a news item when people are searching for a movie or show or game. Maybe it's a long-winded way of ensuring a story shows up in AI-generated search results, increasingly the main way users are being directed towards a website.

(If you work in SEO and know why, I'd love to hear it!)

Whatever the reasons, I know the results: It's an indignity. Like, come on man. We're people trying to get by on the internet here, and being treated like an article is a puzzle box that feels designed solely to torment someone into juicing a pageview, rather than inform or entertain a reader, is a demeaning experience. Nobody should have to dance for their supper just to find out some folks have rediscovered The Wire again.

The more I see these headlines, the more I feel like one of the last living humans on an internet increasingly written by machines for machines. What are we even doing here, when headlines aren't being written for the people reading the website? What even is a website without that? There's nothing in these headlines making me want to click on these stories, and there's very little in them to warrant the deception in the first place. It's smoke and mirrors from top to bottom.

Like I said, I feel for the very human writers with their bylines attached to posts like these (and remember, many headlines are written by editors, not the writers!). Nobody goes into writing wanting to do this, and with jobs as scarce as they are now I don't begrudge a single soul for following whatever bonkers guidelines they're being asked to follow.

But like, where does this ride we're on end? How much more impenetrable and frustrating are headlines going to become before human beings stop being able to understand them at all, let alone want to read them.