"<Generation we want to sell more stuff to> has rediscovered the joy of <thing we want to sell more of>"
It's possible many such articles are actually truly random and they just add generations to them because it increases engagement, which would be somehow even more sad.
Either way they are definitely not legitimate and you can safely ignore almost any headline with a generation in it.
Ads have always been like this. If you're at the point where you're getting upset about ads pretending to be something else, you're not actually upset at the ad.
> If you're at the point where you're getting upset about ads pretending to be something else
Please. Nobody is ever pushed to "the point where they get upset about [willful deceptions]" because that is the regular human baseline.
> you're not actually upset at the ad
I guess? They're clearly upset at the willful deception, though.
> Ads have always been like this.
If ads are expected to be deceptive, then of course they are upset at the ad. At that point, its mere existence is an insult.
what do you expect news outlets to do? make up stories? report on something uninteresting? should they report on something they think will never be "trendy"?
there's an infinite number of stories they COULD report on, so they need a prioritization scheme to choose what. I would expect sizable overlap across the media outlets you list, but much less (though non-zero) with a news outlet like The Hollywood Reporter.
One thing I DO wish for is that they are better at reporting "foreign" news. Now that would be cool.