• lapis [fae/faer, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    the fact that the article takes a more sympathetic tone is nice, but does not negate the fact that the headline is both offensive and just downright awful.

    also kinda absurd to think we should go to the effort of finding and reading the article when it’s not linked in the OP or the linked tweet and the headline is this fucking hurtful already.

    • macerated_baby_presidents [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      2 months ago

      you should be aware that headlines are often written by an editor, not the author. This is why I don’t pay much attention to them, especially in science journalism. You’ll get a paper published like “In vivo effect of XYZ on telomeres” that says XYZ extended rat lifespans by 1%, an interview with a scientist that says “nobody has tested this on primates yet, but helpful molecules in XYZ class could conceivably be discovered within a few decades”, and a headline that says “XYZ PROMISES ETERNAL LIFE WITHIN THE DECADE”. Whatever gets clicks and/or outrage gets published.

      I think that hurtful and inflammatory posts are the ones we need to double-check before sharing more widely. Especially screenshots like this that have a reaction built-in.

      • lapis [fae/faer, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        2 months ago

        I am well aware that headlines are shit and written by an editor rather than the author, but I disagree that reacting to them is wrong. the headline is what the publication chose to lead with, and shows the tone they wanted people to be led into the article with. the headline is arguably more in tune with what the general populace would read and identify with than the content of the article, since its entire purpose is to grab potential readers’ attention.

        I think if allistics want autistics to not react to their shit takes, they should stop publishing headlines that alienate and demonize us.

        • macerated_baby_presidents [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          2 months ago

          idk seems backwards. scientist is publishing a good study. in a vacuum we’re happy about this. it’s a good development. But the headline centers the bad worldview of the editors and maybe laymen. (I certainly wouldn’t say that autistic adults don’t “experience complex emotions”, and most allistic people probably wouldn’t either if asked. Idk maybe there are polls showing differently.) And we react to the headline. So now, in response to good news, we are more upset than before. I don’t like that. What’s more, this manufactured outrage reinforces exactly the wrong ideas about the state of the world. What will you remember more from looking at this screenshot, that allistic culture is as bad as the editors think or that scientists are in fact working to “[shape] a more holistic approach to understanding people and interacting socially and allowing neurodivergent people to be themselves” and getting at least some acceptance from other scientists since they’re getting published?

          I want everybody to stop headline reacting. It’s not unique to autistic users. Often on hexbear I encounter obviously misleading or false posts that fall apart after a cursory search and/or skim. Memes posted as fact (ukraine ryan gosling kill list, turkish shooter dude), outright fakery (twitter whitelisted slurs), bad science journalism (Small Penises and Fast Cars: Evidence for a Psychological Link, this was posted because a jpg of a different graph went big on twitter and there were a bunch of garbage articles about it). I find this frustrating. We shouldn’t recreate reddit-logo. Maybe this is inherent to all social media that prioritizes most-interacted-with posts.

          • lapis [fae/faer, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            2 months ago

            scientist is publishing a good study. in a vacuum we’re happy about this. it’s a good development. But the headline centers the bad worldview of the editors and maybe laymen.

            well yeah, the scientist is an autist, and the editor may or may not be. I’d argue the dichotomy is shown perfectly in this example, actually – autistic scientist publishes research about how autistic people have deep emotional lives, newspaper editor interprets it as “omg autistic people have emotions?!”

            I want everybody to stop headline reacting.

            then headlines should stop having shitty takes. the fault is not on those reacting to something shitty, it’s on the person doing the shitty thing.

            • macerated_baby_presidents [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              2 months ago

              how do you know he’s autistic? I didn’t find anything about it when looking him up. Couldn’t find a social media bio.

              I’m not placing moral blame. Doesn’t matter whose “fault” it is. If Marxists are to be effective, we need to understand the world around us, so we should do some investigation. Editors could write better headlines but the bourgeois press was not built to educate leftists.

              • lapis [fae/faer, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                2 months ago

                how do you know he’s autistic?

                while you were arguing that marxism means clicking through to articles, I was studying the blade (nah jk that’s a link to the paper the article was based on). the paper’s author states that they’re autistic and they both use and personally prefer identity-first language in their positionality statement:

                If Marxists are to be effective, we need to understand the world around us, so we should do some investigation.

                I think we may just not agree on this part, comrade – it’s my belief that understanding the likely reasons behind the choice of headline is part of understanding the world around us, and reacting to the headline is a reaction to media bias and, to an extent, the general public’s thought patterns. while reading the article itself is well and good, an evaluation of the headline alone is also valuable.