It is impossible not to write clickbait headlines … sometimes. And that’s not because there are not a lot of reasons to use them. It seems that people, despite their dislike, can’t NOT click on them. Maybe the same way you can’t NOT look at a road accident you are passing contributing to the rubber-necker rush hour slowdown you find yourself trapped in. And isn’t that the excuse? I’m already traveling 2 miles an hour, so why not take a peek as I idly idle past? But these are headlines. How is that even the same thing?
Somewhere in the murk-filled corners of the human mind, they are. The more bombastic and unbelievable, the better. Tabloids live and die on these things. Priest Explodes during Exorcism. Despite that attraction, I try to avoid using them, perhaps out of some misplaced sense of literary something something. It’s as if I don’t want to be known as that guy, even though it might double my ad revenue and make me less reliant on donations. But I still fall for them, less now than before. The EPOCH Times, for example, likes to write things like ‘SCOTUS 5-4 Decision.’ On what? It’s usually something stupid, so I don’t click it. Another from which my headline above derives is “Certain Dark Chocolates Contain High-Level Heavy Metals, Study Finds.”
I clicked on that and admit I was disappointed. The high levels got me, and while I don’t trust the FDA too much anymore, high levels are misleading. The metals are lead, cadmium, and arsenic. Researchers tested multiple brands purchased in different years, and when measured against the FDA standards for daily exposure, they passed with more or less flying colors.
“97.2 percent of all products tested fell below the FDA IRLs for lead,” and they all tested below the IRLs for cadmium and arsenic. High levels? Even compared to California’s more restrictive standards, 43 percent of products tested exceeded Prop 65 limits for lead, while 35 percent of products exceeded Prop 65 limits for cadmium. No products exceeded Prop 65 limits for arsenic. But that’s California.
California is littered with loons who want to fine churches for using plastic stirs in coffee that should have a warning label about the risk of cancer. California banned travel to nearly a dozen states for not being as woke as they were. San Francisco did something similar until it realized how much it cost the city and how not one state changed any laws as a result. They didn’t care. Lunatics. So, I think it is safe to say that the heavy metal standards in California are not the best metric, more so now that they are going all Electric vehicles without any mention of how the heavy and rare earth metal mining necessary are destroying the environment of Indigenous peoples around the globe – and the people with them.
California is stupid, as is the headline—high levels. No one wants to lead in their chocolate, but this reeks of the forever chemicals schtick bandied about for PFOAs (they don’t know if that’s true either, but it sounds scary). The dose does make the poison. Exposure over time may have complications and will if it is high enough but not if it’s low enough. That always gets left out.
The article does go on to provide all sorts of details about the metals and the chocolate, how the two might meet before you get a taste and exposure to children versus adults; all useful, but it all feels a bit like Rachel Carson to me.
But they did get me to click the link.