Yesterday I came across a headline on a news channel’s Facebook page: “Security camera captures a rock falling on a car wash in Turkey.”
I clicked, noticing two people standing there; curious to see how they would make it out alive. The headline, however, never mentioned them. It turned out the rock fell on them, and they died.
I was unsettled, not just by the event itself, but by how the story was told. And I wasn’t alone; the comments were full of criticism. One person wrote:
“I never studied journalism, but I know the most important part is usually mentioned in the news. Is the car wash more important to you than the people standing there? Or did the editor not notice them at all? We pray for their safety.”
That comment stopped me. I asked myself: who do we really write for? Did the editor sacrifice the human story to avoid triggering the algorithm with words like “death” or “killed”? Or was the headline deliberately crafted to provoke outrage, knowing it would drive comments, and therefore, reach?
What algorithms have done to us
As a writer and editor, I respect writing as a way of connecting with people. Not as a tool where social media rules or SEO mechanics dictate the value of the message.
Think about how often we come across articles that are hard to read, translated word-for-word, or stuffed with keywords that break the flow of language. Why? To “please” search engines.
This strips writing of its true essence. We might trick the algorithm into thinking we deserve to rank, but what about the real reader? They’re left with copy-paste logic, clichés, and empty value.
We’ve normalized posts that ask questions never answered as Hooks, clickbait headlines that dissolve into shallow content, and “filler pieces” churned out just to jump on a trending topic.
From human to human
This is why the internet feels flooded with hollow content; designed for machines, not humans. But writing should always centre around the person on the other side of the screen.
We need to put people first: their curiosity, struggles, and need for clarity or hope. We need to honour their time with language that flows, insights that matter, and ideas grounded in real experience, not recycled templates.
Even from a marketing perspective, content that honors humans -not products or platforms- is what builds trust and long-term relationships.
The real challenge is to flip the order: not “how do we fit the keyword in,” but “what does the reader truly need to feel, understand, or solve?” The human response should guide the sentence, not the search term.
The human compass
Writers and editors need daily reminders: the human is the compass. At a time when algorithms try to steer us away from authenticity, our task is to reclaim it.
Maybe we can’t fight algorithms, but we can bend them to serve content that deserves to exist. Maybe we can still bring back writing that reflects humanity, because people are the ones worthy of stories.
