Headlines
Headlines
[Caption above the frame:] 20th Century Headlines Rewritten to get more clicks
[The years are always written at the center. The text has a line pointing to the relevant year. The first text is written to the left of the year. Then the texts below is alternately written to the right and to the left, finishing at the right in 1990.] 1905 - How a shocking new theory, discovered by a dad, proves scientists are wrong about everything! 1912 - 6 Titanic survivors who should have died 1920 - 17 things that will be outlawed now that women can vote 1928 - This one weird mold kills all germs 1929 - Most embarrassing reactions to the stock market crash [GIFs] 1945 - These 9 Nazi atrocities will make you lose faith in humanity 1948 - 5 insane plans for feeding West Berlin you won't believe are real 1955 - Avoid Polio with this one weird trick 1957 - 12 nip slips potentially visible to Sputnik 1968 - This year's assassinations ranked from most to least tragic 1969 - This is the most important photo of an astronaut you'll see all day 1986 - This video of a terminally ill child watching the Challenger launch will break your heart 1989 - You won't believe what these people did to the Berlin wall! [Video] Jan 1, 1990 - 500 signs you're a 90s kid

This comic satirizes the sensationalist language used in Internet headlines. Many websites generate ad revenue for getting visitors ("getting more clicks"), so some unscrupulous editors seek to manipulate their readers using tantalizing yet formulaic and crass headlines, designed to attract readers rather than summarize the article's contents. You might recognize this technique from those ridiculous text advertisements — "local mom discovers 1 weird tip to reduce belly fat." The practice is nothing new: tabloid journalism has been doing this for many years (e.g. National Enquirer ). The numbers shown at the headline are also often wrong and not covered by the article.
Signs of a dishonest headline include giving undue weight to trivial topics, or appealing to readers' emotions or needs (fear, outrage, pity, lust, laziness) instead of offering serious information. In severe cases, it may be a bait-and-switch , claiming to offer something it isn't. By failing to give a useful summary of the story, whilst attempting to force the reader to click on every story on the off-chance that it's interesting, they amount to an intentionally deceptive form of spam.
Randall parodies the formula in this comic with such trivializing headlines for important historical events:
Albert Einstein published his Annus Mirabilis papers , which changed views on space, time, mass, and energy, and laid the groundwork for much of modern physics. They included his papers on special relativity and on mass–energy equivalence ("E = mc 2 "). He had an infant son in 1905 (born May 1904). The use of the term "dad" helps readers tune in emotionally. "Proving scientists wrong about everything" is obviously an inflation of Einstein's achievements, though not completely incorrect as Einstein's discoveries did undermine current theories about fundamentals of the universe such as space, time and motion. Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921 for his work on the photoelectric effect ; his work on relativity was still not accepted by many physicists at that time.
Sinking of the RMS Titanic . "should have died" seems to be referring to six passengers whose survival was downright miraculous, though the wording is (deliberately) ambiguous to imply the six passengers deserved to have died. Possibly referred to here is the survival of J. Bruce Ismay , chairman and managing director of the White Star Line (the company responsible for the Titanic), who was condemned as a coward for leaving the sinking liner.
The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed, guaranteeing voting rights for women in all US states. The prediction of new prohibitions is a reference to alcohol prohibition under the authority granted to the federal government by the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution . While the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified before women's suffrage was guaranteed by the Nineteeth, alcohol prohibition was widely seen as an issue driven by women's opinions (hence the suggestion that more things would be prohibited now that women had the vote).
Penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming.
This is a reference to the Wall Street Crash of 1929 , the most devastating stock market crash in history and the beginning of the Great Depression. The "embarassing reactions" may be a reference to the suicides of people suddenly impoverished by the depression. [GIFS] indicates that the post will contain animated GIF images, which are a crude form of short video. Presumably, these GIFs will feature the aforementioned suicides, which would be considered tasteless at best. The GIF89a specification which supports animation was released in 1990, so animated GIFs (or computers for that matter) didn't exist in 1929.
1945 is the year that World War II ended. It's also the year that many war crimes committed by Nazi Germany were discovered or declassified. These events would be cause enough for anyone to re-evaluate their belief in the inherent goodness of the human race. However, the specific phrase "lose faith in humanity" is one often employed on the web by rather over-dramatic people in response to something someone did to exasperate them; and because that particular wording is closely associated with exaggerative tendencies, its usage in relation to Nazi war crimes only downplays their seriousness.
1948 is when the Soviet Union established the Berlin Blockade , preventing food and other critical supplies from reaching occupied Berlin. In response, Western forces organized the Berlin Airlift (previously referenced in 1037: Umwelt , where it became Berlin Chairlift instead).
The polio vaccine was developed. "One weird trick" is a common phrase used in Internet ads: see this article for more information. It may also refer to the fact that polio viruses were used as the first vaccines.
The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 , the world's first artificial satellite. A nip slip is when a woman unintentionally exposes all or part of one or both of her nipples; in the context of the internet, it generally refers to a photograph capturing such a moment. Saying that 12 were visible from space implies that they were really big 'nip slips', or at least that only those 12 were big enough to be visible to telescopes.
Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy ( John F. Kennedy's younger brother) were both assassinated in 1968 (five years after JFK). Assassinations are rare and considered to be always tragic, so "ranking" them trivializes the political and emotional depth of the events.
Apollo 11 performed the first manned lunar landing. During this historic trip newspapers printed as many pictures of astronauts as they could.
Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight. See Space Shuttle Challenger disaster for details. This was the first shuttle mission that included a teacher on board as part of the crew ( Christa McAuliffe , Teacher in Space Project ), so there were many children -- a New York Times poll put the number at 48% of 9-13 year olds in the US -- watching this particular launch live as teachers around the country had TV sets in their classrooms showing the ill-fated launch in real time. The launch was not shown on most mainstream TV stations; only CNN broadcast it live. Since this many children did see it, there would also have been several terminal ill children watching, and likely also some press out at one such place. So they could get this picture. And again toy with our emotions.
Fall of the Berlin Wall . [video] indicates a link to a video.
A 90s kid is someone born in the late 80s or early 90s (and spent most their childhood in the 1990s). Headlines like this one from BuzzFeed toy with their readers' sense of nostalgia. The parody headline is funny because it starts precisely on the first day of the 1990s, meaning that the only "90s kids" that it would apply to would be newborns. This is a reference to a common joke about the 90s not having a concrete identity in some ways like the 70s or 80s did in terms of popular culture, and yet those born in that decade always seem to have long lists of things that make you a "90s kid".
Einstein published his theory of General relativity , which is a vast generalization of the theory of Special relativity from 1905 and provides a model for gravity. In 1916 Einstein had two sons who lived in Zurich while he lived in Berlin. [NSFW] is "Not Safe for Work" - a tag to identify explicit images. Here it is used to trick readers hoping to find pornography. [PICS] tells the potential viewer that there are images embedded.
This topic is re-used in 1307: Buzzfeed Christmas .
[Caption above the frame:] 20th Century Headlines Rewritten to get more clicks
[The years are always written at the center. The text has a line pointing to the relevant year. The first text is written to the left of the year. Then the texts below is alternately written to the right and to the left, finishing at the right in 1990.] 1905 - How a shocking new theory, discovered by a dad, proves scientists are wrong about everything! 1912 - 6 Titanic survivors who should have died 1920 - 17 things that will be outlawed now that women can vote 1928 - This one weird mold kills all germs 1929 - Most embarrassing reactions to the stock market crash [GIFs] 1945 - These 9 Nazi atrocities will make you lose faith in humanity 1948 - 5 insane plans for feeding West Berlin you won't believe are real 1955 - Avoid Polio with this one weird trick 1957 - 12 nip slips potentially visible to Sputnik 1968 - This year's assassinations ranked from most to least tragic 1969 - This is the most important photo of an astronaut you'll see all day 1986 - This video of a terminally ill child watching the Challenger launch will break your heart 1989 - You won't believe what these people did to the Berlin wall! [Video] Jan 1, 1990 - 500 signs you're a 90s kid
