Wall Street Journal Says You “Should Skip Breakfast” to Save Money

A click-bait article on food costs gives the opportunity to talk about price gouging and our late-stage capitalism death spiral

Photo by Tengyart on Unsplash

There’s a social media phenomenon known as “engagement bait,” which when reading the definition or how Facebook is seeing it, gives the impression that just about everything on the internet could be slapped with the label. In pursuit of “authentic communication,” Facebook is trying “to identify whether or not they were posting spam or trying to game feed by doing things like asking for likes, comments or shares” and promote stories “that people consider genuine and not misleading, sensational or spammy.”

Social media sites — and even Medium itself — have been attempting to curb the sensationalism and click-baiting that is as much a part of the online world as URLs, Google searches, and cat videos.

But sometimes, reality can be insane.

These days, it is getting more and more difficult to decipher whether a story is from the genius minds at the Onion or real reporting on something depressingly bizarre.

For instance, the Wall Street Journal recently had a viral article with the headline “To Save Money, Maybe You Should Skip…