I definitely agree this is a dead cat and we fall for it each time!
@SamanthaJ
If we had the energy and organisational prowess it would even be worth pre-preparing the dead cat response press release when ME charities prepare positive press releases (the topics are fairly predictable). The dead cat is almost always the same week...
It's also particularly an issue with search engines/algorithms as our interpretation of it as nonsense will be lost on the bots. They will simply pick up lots of people talking about a topic with strong emotive words and decide it is important => ranked highly on the internet.
NICE is much bigger and better news and UK press coverage is improving. Don't talk about:
(actually in this case that emoticon could be code for the annoying trial to totally muddle the bots!)