Please don't call family or friends on the phone!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2022

A Washington Post alert: We'll admit that we retain our fascination with the headlong devolution of the (online) Washington Post.

As our culture moves post-truth, are we also moving in the direction of post-newspaper? Consider what we found when we journeyed to the online Post at 9:45 this morning.

As always, the online paper's endless front page started with what seemed to be a set of major news headlines. 

Those headlines appeared at the top of the page. That's very much as it ought to be, but the first three headlines were these:

Nearly 9 in 10 covid deaths are in people 65 or older

Sea levels are rising dramatically off Virginia, threatening a community—and the entire East Coast

Calling out of the blue: Why would you do this to someone you love? 

The first two headlines seemed to relate to recognizable news topics. But what about the inscrutable headline on that third report? 

In the case of that third report, the full double headline said this:

Calling out of the blue: Why would you do this to someone you love? 
In the age of texting and DMs, a ringing phone can sound like nothing but bad news.

Believe it or not, this third report was a heartfelt, lengthy warning about the danger of calling family or friends on the phone. 

Why would you call someone you love on the phone? Your family or friends may think it's bad news, the Post's Ellen McCarthy was bizarrely warning Post readers. 

Yes, that's what it said! It was the third report at the very top of the online Washington Post's front page, and it started like this:

MCCARTHY (11/28/22): Adria Barich is a haunted woman. Her tormentor tracks her everywhere, threatening to ambush her in a dimly lit parking garage, as she drives down a desolate road or when she’s let her guard down to wash dishes or collapse on the couch.

“I’ve actually changed my ringtone a few times, because I start to associate it with terror,” says Barich, a 24-year-old California woman who works in marketing. “But every time that I do, after, like, a week or so, it just becomes terrifying again.”

There is nothing that makes Barich seize up with fear like an incoming call.

“I feel anxiety. I stiffen up. I also kind of make myself pretend that I didn’t see it,” she says. “And nine times out of 10, I’m not going to answer it. If someone really needs to reach me, they can text me, leave a voice mail or continue to call me again and again and again. I wait for their next move before I decide what I’m going to do.”

For the record, McCarthy isn't suggesting that Adria Barich is in the grip of some puzzling phobia. McCarthy's point of view is completely different. Soon, she's offering this:

MCCARTHY: If these levels of live-caller dread sound ludicrous to you, congratulations. Maybe your friends and family call just to chat, and you welcome these telephonic drop-bys even when they are not invited or forewarned. Maybe those conversations seldom veer into awkwardness or tedium.

For the rest of us, impromptu calls have become roughly equivalent to turning up unannounced at someone’s home and smushing your face up against their window. Our comfort and patience with person-to-person calls have eroded as text messaging became the preferred way of communicating all but the gravest of news. The ringtone grows ominous. For whom does it toll?

The lunacy proceeds from there in this latest offering from the increasingly bizarre (online) Washington Post. 

McCarthy's report goes on and on about the anguish people feel when they hear the ring of their phone. It's clear that McCarthy feels that this anguish is entirely sensible. Meanwhile, let us repeat our original point:

At 9:45 this morning, this was the third (3rd) news report at the very top of the online Washington Post's front page! To appearances, this was the third most important topic the online Post believed it was reporting at that point in time.

Please don't call your friends on the phone, this high-profile offering said. Below it, the next headline led to an absurdly frivolous, poorly reasoned report about the way politicians have gained or lost Twitter followers since Elon Musk took over the company. The headline there said this:

Shift in follower counts for Elizabeth Warren, Ted Cruz show how Twitter is beginning to change

From there, it was on to one last pair of reports. They completed the set of six which were given full banner treatment at the top of the Post's front page:

Pilot, passenger rescued after plane gets tangled in high-voltage lines in Maryland

I drove all 1,700 miles of Australia’s remote Outback Way. Here’s what it’s like. 

According to those last two reports, there had been an unusual local accident in which no one was hurt. Also, some guy had driven across Australia, and he wanted to say what it's like!

For the record, today's print edition of the Post featured five (5) front-page news reports. All five of those reports concerned traditional "hard news" topics.

Three of those reports appeared above the fold on the front page of today's print editions. At 9:45 this morning, none (none) of those three reports were visible in any way on the endless, aggressively tedious front page of the online Washington Post. 

Observers have noted that we seem to be living in a "post-truth" world. Are we moving toward a post-sanity realm at the online Post?