womens magazine 'shock' stories are they really real ?

[romeolovedjulliet]

such thrilling titles like 'he shagged my mum then killed our neighbour' 'he raped me, i had quads but i love him' and such rubbish. the mags really have gone down the last upteen years judging by the titles. if this shit was written on here ifwould get deleted as troll fodder.
aibu to think this way ?

I was intrigued by a caption on the cover recently "I found out my sister was pregnant by my groom on my wedding day!"

The sister was a surrogate for the couple via ivf. hardly worth the sensational headline.

I was once very bored on a night shift so my colleagues and I made up ten ridiculous 'tips' (along the lines of hanging odd gloves in the fuse cupboard to store spare torch batteries) and sent them to Chat. Several years later I got a cheque in the post for fifteen quid as they'd used one of them. 😂

Aww I love a trashy mag. It is what you pay for. Tbh the headlines and stories make me laugh and the puzzles are nice and easy.

I think some of the stories are exaggerated and written in a sensationalist style , but that’s why I enjoy them. There’s a really funny fbook page called take a shite that rips the mickey out of the mags.

One of my favourite tips was "Save money on thank you cards by collecting some pebbles and writing thank you on them with nail varnish. My friends loved them!" They looked really shit.

@My2catsarefab

If you want a laugh there's a hilarious parody Twitter page called 'Take A Shit' where they share funny/naff hints & tips out of magazines.The best one has to be the lady who had no fascinator for a wedding so stuck a bath scrunchie on a headband and wore that to the wedding!

Oh my god I remember that one!!!

I was actually shocked when I read one of those, I knew the woman! She was my stepson's ex, the mother of his children. Her story was about being kidnapped and held as a domestic slave by a neighbour. It sounded completely bonkers and as though it was exaggerated in the magazine, but I also saw some of the court documents from the criminal case courtesy of DSS and it was all true.

Belated congrats for pastiche SmileyClare. I started my reply, made coffee, came back, posted and have only just caught up with the thread. This is one of my favourite threads ever RomeolovedJuliet. Thanks for starting it. I have also discovered Take A Shite, which was new to me but a definite treat.

@altforvarmt

Sometimes it's real, scarily enough. My friend's stepdad really did have a relationship with a schoolgirl he met because he was a school bus driver, and my friend's mum sold her story to Chat magazine.

My dad did exactly this (she was 17 & he was 22) - 40 years, 3 kids & 5 grandchildren later they're still happily married!

I wouldn't say it's in the same league as some of the headlines I've seen on these trashy magazines.

I used to love these mags.
@MissPiggee
That poem is brilliant

A very distant family member of mine.

Her husband slept with her mum and her brother. They actually went on the Jeremy Kyle show and that wasn't even mentioned.
You couldn't make this shit up.

I used to read them in the local launderette's waiting room. You get through a lot during a 30+ minute wash cycle and I can confidently tell you that the stories within the magazine bear little relation to the sensational headlines on the cover.

My boyfriend and I turned it into a game. First player reads out the headline and second player guesses what the story actually says. Points on accuracy of guess and then swap. Person with most points when the washing machine cycle finishes wins!

For example:

Headline: 'My daughter's boyfriend SAVED MY LIFE'

Story: 'daughter's boyfriend gave woman a lift to her appointment with GP'.

It's like the headline that says "Judy leaves Richard!!!" and it turns out he stays in the kitchen bleaching the chopping board while she goes to another room.

56Beetle that is brilliant! "Something to leaf through during the ad breaks on Jeremy Kyle"

I sometimes wonder if they would buy my story, people I know can't believe it (my ex has had more names than hot dinners for a start)

I used to buy these in the days before smart phones to read on the train when I was visiting now-DH! My favourite headline was "My Mum Exploded on the Operating Table" .

Also came across two people I recognised in there - one was someone's OW ( and a well known local shoplifter from my retail days! ) and the other was the one telling the story, quite a sad case of child neglect that explained a lot about the family

"I've married 25 men!" and it turns out to be about a female vicar.

"I had sex with my dad!" and it's not her actual dad, just a toyboy boyfriend 'step-dad' her mother was with for a year.

"I murdered my husband!" and it was in a play that the couple both appeared in.

I wonder how many of the subjects are furious when they read how their stories have been twisted, embellished and manipulated once they make it into the magazine. Not to mention the other unwitting 'stars' of the story. I wouldn't like to be the person who has to answer the phones the day after publication!

I once appeared in The Sun following a really silly thing that happened to me. I can't imagine why people would have cared, but I was on the same page as a murderer and a paedophile. They did what a lot of MNers do when they just read the subject line and fill in the rest in their own heads, instead of reading or actually asking the person involved and they quoted me saying something totally random and fabricated by them. If they did that for me, you can only imagine how much of the stories about important things they just write as pure fiction.

'PREGNANT by my SISTER'S Teacher!'

30 year old Beth has met 32 year old Liam and they're having a baby. But! Liam once taught English at her old school when Beth's youngest sister was still at secondary school.

Oh, the scandal.

A colleague's husband had a tragic death abroad which left her with 4 children to raise.
About a year after the death she received multiple calls and letters to almost the point of harassment from these types of magazine who had tracked her through records of his death and offered her £500 to tell her story.
She declined and it put me right off buying any of those magazines again.

I also like the description of the man ‘when I first met Lee, I instantly fell for his piercing blue eyes and cheeky smile’ accompanied by a photo, usually a police mugshot, of an absolute thug (and the story turns out that he stabbed her 28 times or something)

I know someone who was featured in a Take a Break article. She was happy to do it (they emailed her after reading about her in a local news article) as she wanted to raise awareness of the particular issue that affected her (and now volunteers for a charity which helped her with this issue).

She actually wrote the article and sent it to them, but they 'Take a Break - ified' it completely. They dumbed down every word longer than two syllables and made the sentences really short. It made her sound almost comically illiterate, but she didn't mind too much as it was all about raising awareness to a wider audience.

Even the more "respectable" women's weeklies like Woman and Woman's Own sometimes have teasing headlines that don't quite reflect the content especially regarding celebs.

Even the more "respectable" women's weeklies like Woman and Woman's Own sometimes have teasing headlines that don't quite reflect the content especially regarding celebs.

I'm sure it was one of those two some time ago that had a big cover splash obviously designed to make you think that Eamonn and Ruth - with sombre separate photos of the two of them - were going to break up and it was either a lighthearted comment they'd made or a subject that they were covering on telly.

It's not unknown for them to show a glum celeb carrying a suitcase or piece of furniture, clearly hoping to suggest that they're divorcing and moving out, when they're actually seeing their grown-up children off to uni or moving house as a family.

I was intrigued by a caption on the cover recently "I found out my sister was pregnant by my groom on my wedding day!"
I got wise to the misleading headlines I would have assumed that the groom hasmd found out the sister was pregnant by someone telling him and he told the bride the good news!!

MissPiggee that’s hilarious 🤣🤣🤣

She actually wrote the article and sent it to them, but they 'Take a Break - ified' it completely. They dumbed down every word longer than two syllables and made the sentences really short. It made her sound almost comically illiterate

I love to think of the subjects of stories communicating eloquently in highbrow prose and then having it dumbed down to fit the house style. A romantic liaison becomes a sordid romp, weekly book-group becomes bingo and noticing a fascinating in-depth analysis on Newsnight becomes catching up on all the Corrie goss!

It makes perfect sense, as they all speak exactly in the same way and use all of the same turn of phrase and cliches. Who even uses the word 'romp' these days except in the context of babies' clothing?

I'll bet they have a lot of incoherent people with very poor communication skills and very little in the way of actual story - they write it as if it's them actually speaking to you in their own words, but nobody ever peppers their words liberally with swearword punctuation, endless 'likes' or 'and then she turned around' - which a great many people clearly routinely do in real life.

One of my fave headlines was “ Darts, tarts and broken hearts “.