EVERYONE by now will be familiar with the "click-bait" culture of print media websites.
This is the not-so-subtle practice developed in the battle to retain readers -- and advertisers -- against the new behemoths, Facebook and Google.
Sub-editors now conjure up headlines that tease, taunt and titillate -- anything to attract a click of the mouse and one more "reader" for the tally.
This is in the tradition of rampant British tabloids such as the Sun, with its doozy headlines like "FREDDIE STARR ATE MY HAMSTER", or "WEREWOLF SEIZED IN SOUTHEND".
Or the Sunday Sport's "STATUE OF ELVIS FOUND ON MARS", "ADOLF HITLER WAS A WOMAN", and "3 INCH DOG ATE MY MISSUS".
And the classic -- and true -- New York Post's "HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR".
Social media's influence is also very evident in some of the stories themselves. Thus, on the NZ Herald site the other day, the latest Kardashian crisis was updated. Apparently, all the padding injected into Kim's ample buttocks over the years is now on the move, much like shifting coal in a collier's bunkers. There's concern in the Kardashian camp that any day now she may develop a list abaft, and possibly even turn turtle if the wind gets up enough.
Similarly, we had a piece, including sample pics, on the latest craze in tourist travel -- "belfies".
This is where trippers organise a selfie, but one taken from the rear and of the rear. Subjects are pictured admiring the view of the Grand Canyon, or Amazon River, or whatever -- the difference being their trousers are at half-mast and there are bare buttocks mooning back at the camera. A truly spiffing jape.
CLASSIC: Eye-grabbing tabloid headlines were the precursor of click-bait.
Then we had the headline, with accompanying still shot -- "Stomach-churning: Lump on man's face erupts when squeezed". A video of said eruption was attached, but I decided my stomach was sufficiently churned already.
But this singular piece of breaking news seemed strangely evocative. I struggled to think of what. Then an image of two bad haircuts hove into view ...
Yes, it was of Donald and that other Kim -- the North Korean one. And, no prizes, guess who was doing the squeezing and whom was in danger of erupting in a stomach-churning, very messy way?
Sadly, this Herald item encapsulated the obscene present high jinks on the Korean peninsula. In red, white and blue trunks, we have one bouffanted bimbo who -- thus far mainly thwarted in his ultra-right ambitions -- has discovered in the military a willing accomplice for exercising his Trump-Tower-sized ego.
Also in red, white and blue trunks, we have a swatch-top tyro tyrant who takes the grain out of peasants' mouths to bodgie up a motley nuclear arsenal for similarly exercising his Trump-Tower-sized ego.
The bouffant bozo is now scarily in charge of an empire on permanent war footing with around 800 military bases worldwide, the world's most powerful nuclear arsenal and a military budget that squanders more than the next eight biggest spenders combined.
The opposing tin-pot tyrant commands the world's fourth largest standing army, but in overall firepower is still very much little league.
A fruit-loop he may be, but given the suicidal consequences, even he is not insane enough to initiate an extra-national attack.
Why unnecessarily squeeze this pimple on the face of humanity by provocatively sending armadas and parading Star Wars material on his border?
Left alone, and with sanctions, sooner or later this unsustainable little mound of toxicity is going to self-implode. Why on earth goad him into a potential catastrophically messy eruption?
