• AA5B@lemmy.world
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    18 days ago

    It’s a Reddit story. There are so many of these, so extreme, I’ve gone way past outrage and generally ignore them as fictional. How could this be true?

    Plus I really hate it when articles sprinkle in random stock photos as if they were real. At least the last photo says it’s a stock image but why do you have a stock image of a person who is not the person you’re writing about? At least the stock image of a tractor is about a tractor, but come on: we all know what a tractor is: this is misleading or zero value unless it resembles reality. Lazy journalism at its worst

    • TheSambassador@lemmy.world
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      18 days ago

      And… Even if it’s true, why is it relevant to most people’s lives? What does it do other than stoke outrage and reinforce the widely held “HOAs bad” view? More than that, reading shit like this over and over again slowly erodes your view of humanity and I think it contributes a lot to general cynicism.

      News organizations seem to have completely stopped answering the question of “why are we reporting on this and why should you care?”

      • violetring@lemmy.world
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        18 days ago

        I used to make lots of comments on Am I the Asshole posts for this reason. Calling out fake posts, and listing reasons why they are fake. Would get a lot of push back that amounted to “why do you care if it’s fake? It’s a good story and an interesting debate.” I cared because the more you read those stories, taken at face value, the less you think of humanity.

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
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          16 days ago

          The mods there were underrated. Aita somehow turned into a favorite activity among my teens and I. We spent so much time discussing posts, deciding what we think and whether we agree with the hive mind. It was the one remaining reason to go back after Rexxit, but rapidly degenerated into junk posts not worth discussing