“Wipe My Ass With Your Feelings” ⇥ theverge.com

Nilay Patel is grouchy:

Today, my friends at Vox.com published a terrific 5,000-word feature about the legacy of the Sopranos, framed around one very exclusive piece of reporting: series creator David Chase told reporter Martha Nochimson whether Tony Soprano dies at the end of the show, a question that fans have debated endlessly in the decade since the series famously ended on a hard cut to black.

It’s terrific, and the Vox.com product team engineered a fantastic presentation where the screen blacks out before the reveal. It’s everything a feature on the internet should be: thoughtful, concise, exclusive, and interactive.

But because the headline was phrased in the form of a question — the question of the entire series — Jake Beckman, who runs the Twitter account @savedyouaclick, decided that it wasn’t worth it. He “saved you a click” and tweeted the reveal.

This is bullshit.

No it isn’t.

If the article is so dependent on the teaser headline that a single tweet can bust the whole thing up, then Beckman did save people a click. If the article is not dependent on the teaser headline and it can stand on its own, why use that particular headline? It attracts clicks, but at the cost of feeling a little trashy.

Put another way, imagine if the Wall Street Journal redesigned their paper to look like the National Enquirer. Would you find it as trustworthy?