Did This Article Just Pose a Rhetorical Question in Lieu of an Actual Headline?

By Reed Thurston

May 25, 2018

Startling readers and baffling journalistic style guidelines everywhere, you won’t believe the answer you hear when we ask the hot-button question that’s on everyone’s mind: Did the headline of this article really just blankly state a pointlessly obvious question, instead of actually conveying any information of substance to its audience?

 Well we, the intrepid journalists of the Chicago Shady Dealer, have done our digging to get the real scoop on this week’s most scandalous and sensational line of inquiry. But what we eventually discovered shocked even the most experienced editors in our staff! 

“But how could that be?” you ask. “What’s really going on with those big words at the top of this column?”

“Does any of it mean anything?”

“Can a mere question actually be considered news of any kind?”

 “Are the writers really so creatively bankrupt that they’d resorted to employing hollow, attention-grabbing, tabloid clickbait schlock tactics just to drum up more business?”

For the answers to all these questions and so many more, look no further than the next five or six sentences, because not only do we not know how you’ll react to the answers we’re about to give you, but we have no idea just how much longer we can pad out this article for content! 

“But, why just a question?” you’re still asking. “Wouldn’t it make more sense just to summarize the content of the article in a brief declarative statement?”

“Doesn’t posing every potential new piece of knowledge as an open question not only muddle the meaning of an otherwise-innocuous fluff piece with unnecessary ambiguity and overt bias, but also fail to actually inform anyone of anything, wasting both the reader’s and the writer’s time and energy?”

“Was this article even about anything in the first place, or is it now just a receptacle for its writer’s vain, self-referential satirical navel-gazing?” 

Well as it turns out, the true answers to all these questions are so incredibly unbelievable that we can’t even run them in print! To get the full story, with all the scandals and salacious details, follow the rest of this piece and click through the entire slideshow so we can farm for ad revenue at www.chicagoshadydealer.com.