I Didn't Need To Read The News Today, Oh Boy

I've always hated it when headlines tell you obvious things. To me, news is defined as being surprising. So a headline like "Obama Does X, Republicans Furious" is not news. But you could argue that such headlines contain some information, even if it's just that things are proceeding normally. "Sun To Come Up Tomorrow" at least confirms that the earth is continuing to spin on its axis.

But then there are the headlines that literally contain no information. There's a great weird I learned in mathematics for this: tautological. It means something that is obviously true, like 1=1. But you see it outside of math too. For instance, you might see a headline like, "X Happens, Critics Sceptical." That doesn't tell you anything, because a critic is someone who is sceptical. It's like saying "Pedestrians Walk."

But now there's a new class of useless headlines, and I'm not sure what to call them. If that first class is "things that we already know," and the second is "things that have to be true," then the third class is "things you didn't already know, or even consider, but that you immediately understood the moment you read about it." My first example of this last type of headline is, "Why You Shouldn’t Watch Porn In The Same Room As Your Parrot."  Which you can learn about here if you really need any more explanation.