Somewhere in the world (let’s be honest — usually Florida) hilariously bizarre things happen every day. So when some people say that the news is boring, we bet they probably never stumbled upon ridiculous, weird, and straight-up stupid stories that made it both to TV and print.
Thanks to the "Internet’s Craziest Headlines" Twitter account, these people might be proved wrong. From "China may be using sea to hide its submarines" to "Large cat spotted" to "Man sold TV to buy remote", the creators of this account bring the most bizarre collection of titles and captions for you to enjoy.
So get ready to witness a whole new level of absurdity because Bored Panda has selected some of the best posts this account had to offer. Continue scrolling and upvote the ones that made you scratch your head the most! After you’re done with this post, you can find some more headline goodness right here and here.
This post may include affiliate links.
Some say "You can’t judge a book by its cover", but it seems that plenty of people decide whether an article is worth reading or a news segment worth watching just by their titles. According to Brian Clark, the founder of Copyblogger, 8 out of 10 people will read the headline, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest.
After all, getting your title clicked on is hard work. It has to be specific, rewarding, and intriguing all at the same time. Plus, it has to be useful if your goal is to reach more people. The headline is the first (and sometimes the only!) impression you make on a potential reader.
"Writing a great headline doesn’t guarantee the success of your writing. The benefit conveyed in the headline still needs to be properly satisfied in the body," Clark wrote. "But great body content with a bad or even marginal headline is doomed to go largely unread."
Lina Survila, the editor in chief of Abstract Stylist online magazine, has years of experience working in the press. She told Bored Panda in a previous interview that "editors are often pressured to bring better results with each article, so headline wars have become the real deal today."
She argued that there's a fine line between an informative headline and a fake one. “First, we all need to know that headlines play a big role in Google's ranking magic. Every editor has a wish for their article to reach the top position, meaning more clicks if a user is often searching for it," Lina explained.
"So because an editor wants to reach more people, they end up using trendy keywords which result in misleading headlines," Lina said and added that it happens more often than you’d think.
The founder of Abstract Stylist also mentioned that "clickbait headlines often mislead people, and those who do not bother to open the article might mislead other people too by spreading the wrong message. For example, recently, I read that K. Reaves is married to Winona Ryder, well, it was stated in the headline, and actually, they were married in the movie."
However, it turns out that readers also contribute to spreading misleading information — some people share links on their social media feeds without ever reading what’s inside. In 2016, satirical news site The Science Post published an article with a troubling headline: "Study: 70% of Facebook users only read the headline of science stories before commenting". However, the body of the article contained nothing more than "lorem ipsum” placeholder text. But nearly 46K people shared the post.
It's not funny when you add headlines from satirical websites. Obviously those will be crazy headlines, because they're NOT REAL.
True that. But the sad thing is that it could be true
Load More Replies...Cops should arrest that guys parents. Poor man has probably had a life time of this stuff.
This isn't real, it's from a satire website.
Load More Replies...Well his name is F*k Yu. Guess the cops weren't having it. I think a certain F*k Yu has some compensation coming his way
1. I don't think this his name. 2. And I know not all Chinese know karate
P**k yu wen was a real name when i worked where i worked, & a source of levity. Gov't office
I worked with a young man named "Hu". When asked something like "who was working on machine #3 last night? I'd answer Hu, with the follow up of "Yeah, can you tell me who?" I'd pause with " yeah , I believe it was Hu" did not want to have a 2-3 minute gag of that joke.
I should not laugh.... I should not laugh.... I sound not laugh....
This could be real. In Mandarin, "f*k yu" means fragrant jade and its a real name. Bloomberg news has a Hong Kong based reporter named F*k Yu Lung. As a journalism student, she won the Anita Borg scholarship from Google as Natalie Lung F*k Yu since the West and East list the given name/family name in different order. "f*k" also means good fortune or blessings in Mandarin and the character for it is often combined with multiple other Chinese characters that translate as "yu" so there are other variants of the name going around when translated to English characters.
According to a study by computer scientists at Columbia University and the French National Institute, 59 percent of links shared on social media have never actually been opened and read.
"People are more willing to share an article than read it," study co-author Arnaud Legout said. "This is typical of modern information consumption. People form an opinion based on a summary, or a summary of summaries, without making the effort to go deeper," he said.
This is why I like to remind people that there's a sliding scale between "People who just think that anthropomorphic animals are neat/easy to draw" and THIS in the Furry Fandom. They're not all weirdos, I swear.
Note: this post originally had 103 images. It’s been shortened to the top 50 images based on user votes.
Anyone else find it boring that like half of these are fake? I'd have thought there is enough crazy headlines out there to not having to include fake ones.
I mean... Just call it "Funny Fake Headlines." Seriously. Bored Panda thinks we're all idiots.
BP articles like this would be a lot better if you weeded out the ones that were actually satire
What I understand from this post : Florida is one heck of a crazy place
The real lesson here: Florida has public record laws that make it easier to write articles like this about the dumb things they do.
Load More Replies...As a Floridian I love reading these Florida Man posts because they are hilarious
This whole thing reminds me of a channel called Gray still plays!! Haha!
They're not crazy headlines if they're made up! Please don't put fake headlines to fake stories in posts like this.
I remember seeing a few of these such as the one about Michigan schools and kitty litter fir furries.
Well, my ex is from Florida, guess that explains a few things. I seem to have dodged a bullet
Just Google Florida Man and follow with your birth month and day... It never disappoints
I enjoy a "Florida Man" joke as much as the next person, but it should always be noted that the REASON Florida has so many crazy headlines is at least partially because of public record laws in Florida. https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/22/us/florida-man-google-challenge-trnd/index.html
Let's keep in mind that part of the reason we see so many "Florida Man" headlines that it's become a meme is that the media has more access to police records due to freedom of information laws in Florida. People from other states do crazy stuff as well, we just don't hear about it as much.
Anyone else find it boring that like half of these are fake? I'd have thought there is enough crazy headlines out there to not having to include fake ones.
I mean... Just call it "Funny Fake Headlines." Seriously. Bored Panda thinks we're all idiots.
BP articles like this would be a lot better if you weeded out the ones that were actually satire
What I understand from this post : Florida is one heck of a crazy place
The real lesson here: Florida has public record laws that make it easier to write articles like this about the dumb things they do.
Load More Replies...As a Floridian I love reading these Florida Man posts because they are hilarious
This whole thing reminds me of a channel called Gray still plays!! Haha!
They're not crazy headlines if they're made up! Please don't put fake headlines to fake stories in posts like this.
I remember seeing a few of these such as the one about Michigan schools and kitty litter fir furries.
Well, my ex is from Florida, guess that explains a few things. I seem to have dodged a bullet
Just Google Florida Man and follow with your birth month and day... It never disappoints
I enjoy a "Florida Man" joke as much as the next person, but it should always be noted that the REASON Florida has so many crazy headlines is at least partially because of public record laws in Florida. https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/22/us/florida-man-google-challenge-trnd/index.html
Let's keep in mind that part of the reason we see so many "Florida Man" headlines that it's become a meme is that the media has more access to police records due to freedom of information laws in Florida. People from other states do crazy stuff as well, we just don't hear about it as much.