news Update From [MERIT]
 

► The Netherlands Freezes Weapons Exports To Saudi Arabia, UAE & Egypt

The most depressing thing about that is that the Netherlands sells weapons of war. Jesus.

News Update From [MERIT]
 

► 7.0 Magnitude Earthquake & Aftershocks Strike Alaska

Slaves, weapons of war, they've been pretty consistent over the years.

This yemen war has got to stop. And the sh!t in Crimea as well. We need to follow the money and cut the problems off at the source.

Humans?

A while a back I met a whole family of three (with a kid) of Dutch people in a state park who were cycling through the southeastern US in the winter. I figured they’d be super liberal but the father at least was super right wing.

Church

Well at least one European nation is.

► San Francisco To Expunge All Misdemeanor Cannabis Convictions From 1975 Onward

The bad ones in positions of power.

Scalpel blades found taped to children's slide in Ormskirk

Banksy's new stuff is dark.

Some people just wanna paint the town red.

News Update From [MERIT]
 

► Muslim Woman Describes Electro-Shock Torture In Chinese Internment Camp


► Commander Of U.S. Navy's Middle East Fleet Vice Admiral SCOTT STEARNEY Found Dead In Bahrain


► Mass Arrests In Paris Following Third Week Of Protests


► Tortured To Death: CIA Refuses To Give Location Of Body Of Afghan Afghan Suspect GUL RAHMAN


► Ukraine Bans Russian Males Ages 16 To 60 From Entering Country


► Police Find 8 Bombs Outside G-20 Summit

I’d prefer to see the URL before clicking.

A lot of those links are from zerohedge.com

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/zero-hedge/

"Zero Hedge’s content has been classified as “alt-right” and has been criticized for presenting conspiracy theories."

Interesting, at the very least.

A post formatted in any kind of loud, attention-seeking way is pretty much a guarantee I won’t read it.

There's a huffpost link in there too, so at least he's diverse in his selection of garbage journalistic sources.

He may be a conspiracy theorist, but at least he's not a partisan.

Then hover your mouse's f*cking pointer over the hyperlink and it will give it to you. Jesus Christ.

It's USER FRIENDLY motherf*cker!!!

I'll just start posting the headlines then, without sources. Okay Homer Simpson?

You've now had numerous people telling you that it's not. This is not a conspiracy. Listen to us.

It’s how spam and chain emails are formatted.

Ja, that's totally better.

The dumb **** I gotta deal with around here.

Lay OFF of hIM GuYS!

Ewww, I'm scared to read the news link because the font is all wonky. STFU.

There's that trademark open mindedness and self awareness we all love.

Much better text formatting. Thumbs up.

I thought it was supposed to be user friendly but now user's should just suck it up and click on the links no matter how ugly they are?

I don't really find them to be that aesthetically displeasing but they definitely could be improved. For one, the triangle bullets could be done away with. I've mainly seen them used by YouTubers promoting their social media and merchandise, and I find it hard to disassociate myself with the idea that they aren't advertising something whenever they show up. Just off the top of my head, regular bullets (•) would work just fine. You're making lists of information, not advertising after all so they'd probably fit better in the longrun. Other than that my only gripe is the underlining, but like I said before hyperlinks are auto-underlined in HTML so you can't do much to change that, unless you organize them like this:


• David Blaine shoots himself in the mouth (source: WGNTV)

Something like that could possibly take some of what some believe to be overbearing emphasis off your article links. Optionally choosing a different font to style them in (Century Gothic is a favorite of mine) may make them stand out again without putting on overbearing emphasis. Just a suggestion.

I know you're just trying to prove a point, but there's a lot of difference between Merit's design and the clickbait design here. I think equating something like that which uses a blinding red coloring, random symbols and exclamation points with simply emboldened underlined text seems a bit dishonest.

I've been biding my time for 14 years and finally got the chance to trick people into clicking spam links to get my jollies. You caught me.

There really isn’t any difference, and in fact they have the same intent, but thanks for playing.

Lmao what? How do they have the same intent? Merit's are referencing news stories that he's found and yours would likely be utilized by a someone trying to get you to click a link so you can get a virus or have your personal information stolen. Clickbait is fundamentally a tool used to get someone to click on something so that the creator earns something, whether it be revenue, personal information, or what have you. In this case, Merit doesn't earn anything if you click on his links. If by "having the same intent" you mean trying to get a viewers intention, then I guess you'd have a point, but if we're playing by that standard most graphic design should be thrown under the bus as the art of "getting attention" is one that's apparently malicious all of the sudden.

Nothing says smart dude like an unnecessarily snarky tack-on for no reason. It screams competent thinker.

Yeah, screaming to get someone to click on a link is totally different from screaming to get someone to click on a link. Good point.

Thanks for the unnecessarily snarky tack-on for no reason.

I've already said how the two differ design-wise, and how Merit's design is far less exclamatory and baity is than yours. It's not perfect either for the reasons I outlined in the post I made critiquing some of it's irritating parts, but it's no "doctors hate him" and to say the two are the same is to deny any nuance.

If Merit didn't use some sort of eye-catching choices, people would be even less likely to click on them. It's safe to assume that's not what he wants, right?

Mine had a purpose. Yours didn't.

Good grief buddy. Relax.

*presents a criticism towards something*
*is presented with viewpoint opposing his criticism*
"WOAH relax there buddy!"

I'm having a conversation with you. That sort of thing's supposed to happen on a forum, right?

Well, I was joking with a person I’ve been interacting with for about a decade and you decided to chime in. I guess that’s a conversation. What would you like to talk about? Typography?

I presented my thoughts towards a point you made that in what I thought was a fairly leveled fashion. I was unaware that you were bantering affectionately and as such I couldn't voice my opinion. I apologize for coming off as confrontational towards you- I was under the impression there really isn't that much restriction when it comes to initiating conversation.

As for what I want to talk about, it varies from moment to moment, man. We could talk about what the best scented candle is for all I care. Personally, I enjoy the scent of vanilla.

sass meters off the charts tonight