I get this may be off topic, but does anyone think these cheesy, bad AI-generated headline images help the article's point of view, or heck even make it more engaging?
It just looks stupid to me in a way that makes me more likely to discount your post.
OpenGraph requires an image for your article regardless of if it is useful or not, for the sake of embeds in facebook and discord (and others)
There's nothing requiring that image to be unique. Lots of sites just provide a higher solution favicon.
This one is a such a bad photoshop too! The box's text is clearly AI generated, with an older model, and the "Autopilot crash data" is imposed on it with an image editing tool. Really cheap looking.
I haven't done it, so I don't have any data to back it up. I suppose it works, at least short term, that is why so many websites, video creators, copywriters, email newsletter writers etc use it?
Negative, cheesy, clickbait, rage inducing etc headlines do seem to get more clicks. There is a reason why politicians spend more time trash talking opponents than talking positively about themselves. Same goes with attack ads.
It started with YouTube thumbnails and leaked from there. It just gets more clicks compared to a legitimate photo
I can get it for some rando YouTube video.
For an article that is supposed to at least smell like journalism, it looks so trashy.
Journalism? It's literally just a blog—a very successful car-influencer blog that's in the past earned 6-figure payments from Tesla itself[0], for their very successful shilling of Teslas.
Journalism is a thing of its own; blogs aren't it.
[0] https://www.thedrive.com/news/24025/electreks-editor-in-chie... ("Electrek’s Editor-in-Chief, Publisher Both Scoring $250,000 Tesla Roadsters for Free by Gaming Referral Program": "What happens to objective coverage when a free six-figure car is at play? Nothing good." (2018))
I’m with you there. Depending on other factors on the page, it can be a smell or a red flag.
People like to think they love literature, yet they read tabloids. People like to say they want better information, yet get their news from social media.
I have not doubt a majority of people will say they despise these pictures like YouTube thumbnails, yet the cold numbers tell the opposite.
If you are not familiar with electreck this is basically a nutshell of their business. Tesla bad = clicks. Tesla good = no clicks. It is stupid and it works, as you can clearly see in this particular example in YC