The Guardian raises the questions “Are you breathing properly?†and “Should my girlfriend stop mixing gold and silver jewellery?â€
At the London newspaper The Times, the query is “How did I go on a date — and end up spending the night with his dog?†while The Washington Post is pondering “What is ‘Ozempic personality’ and why does it make life feel ‘meh’?†and also “Do men or women have worse-smelling farts?â€
So what’s with all the question marks?
They’re nothing new. The concept comes from the world of advertising, which has known for more than a century that questions were the answer. “How’s your breath today?†asked a Listerine ad from the 1920s. The point wasn’t to relieve your anxiety about how your mouth smelled, it was actually to instill the anxiety, compelling you to buy a product that solved a problem you hadn’t realized was a problem until you read the ad.
“Will your scalp survive the fingernail test?†(A dandruff hair tonic.)
“Do you make these mistakes in job interviews?†(A correspondence course on how to become an executive.)
And the classic uh-oh headline of all time: “Do you suffer from tired blood?†(Geritol.)
More recently these fretful headlines in the form of questions have migrated from ads to editorial content. Partly this is financial: If something is framed as a question, you don’t know what the answer is until you read the story, which means you spend more time on the news site and are exposed to more ads for longer periods.
But there’s something else going on. The worries laid out in the question-headlines are comically dinky and personal. Some are overtly ridiculous, but most of them pulse with deflected anxiety. The news is huge and disastrous. You can’t comprehend or control or do anything about wars and diseases and the unceasing malevolence coming out of Washington, but you can work on your breathing, your posture, your vacuuming, and your relationship with your boyfriend’s dog.
You can laugh, too. Here’s The Guardian’s headline over a recent column by Marina Hyde: “Is the pope Catholic? JD Vance thinks he has an answer.â€
Sometimes, though, a serious headline asks a question because the question itself is the story. Responding to the chaos and contradictions of the past few weeks, The Times (London) asks: “Is there peace and an open Strait of Hormuz? Or is war still raging?â€
Which brings me back to The Guardian. “Always in crisis mode? You might be catastrophizing.â€
Maybe. Or maybe you’ve just been reading the news.
Joan Wickersham’s latest book is “No Ship Sets Out To Be A Shipwreck.†Her column appears regularly in the Globe.
