I think you’re in the same boat I am where I fucking haaaaaaate the culture on link aggregators (and probably other social media) where people will bitch and moan to no end that their preferred format (publicly reacting to disconnected headlines whose articles they haven’t read) isn’t giving them literally all the information they need to form a cogent opinion.

• “I had time to write a 300-word short essay about this headline, but I’m going to whine if I get called for something in the first paragraph that invalides everything I said.”
• “I can’t believe this headline said a pretty common thing I’m not personally familiar with but the publication’s target audience obviously is.”
• "Headline didn’t answer every single question I could possibly wonder? Uh, clickbait much?

They genuinely think that the article body should be effectively superfluous to the headline – not just to have a basic gist of but to discuss and debate current events, which is insane. It reminds me of people who think they can learn math and physics by passively watching somebody else do it – which is true only to an utterly incosequential extent.

Speaking as someone who’s read thousands of articles for research, I feel confident saying that reading the article is an insane force multiplier to understanding. Any time you spent reacting to the headline would’ve been 3x as effective put into reading even just part of an article. This doesn’t just apply to current events, and even I haven’t thoroughly learned this lesson; so many times I’ve been editing Wikipedia and arrived at a point where reading one goddamn article for three minutes would’ve saved me half an hour of fucking around (“2 hours of debugging can save you five minutes of reading the documentation”).

This is my way of pleading with you (you, the non-CombatWombat reader): it’s enriching once you can steel yourself and work through the initial dopamine drought, and it quickly becomes enjoyable. It’s not your fault it’s so hard psychologically; this was done to you by formats that value engagement with the platform over engagement with the material.