Do you play with headline effects on or off?

They've never bothered me. I do take a lot of screenshots and tell stories, but, I'm telling stories about things that happened in a video game. It's going to look like it's happening in a video game.
https://i.postimg.cc/rwT6C6Vq/Screen-Shot-2022-11-20-at-10-15-53-PM.png

Sometimes the plumbob color just adds a little extra something to the shot
https://i.postimg.cc/wB9W3g6s/11-20-22-3-03-53-PM.png
https://i.postimg.cc/Z5sjQYqZ/12-07-22-6-09-38-PM.png

I usually turn it off if I'm going to be taking a lot of screenshots (especially if I'm using poses). They'll stay off until I try to mouse over something later, get confused as to why I can't see what's happening, then remember to turn them back on.

On for general play and off when I take a screen grab.

I'm definitely on the less popular side of this one. I always leave the plumbobs on, even when I'm taking screenshots for SimLit. Nothing symbolizes The Sims for me like the plumbob does, so I pay homage to it in all its multi-hued glory.

I keep them turned off pretty much all the time because the plumbob and skill bars seriously annoy me. I know which sim I have selected because their portrait is the one at the bottom left of the screen. And if I can't tell what skill a sim is working on or what level they're at just by watching them do the thing (and if I even care) I can open the skill panel and look. I don't need that distracting ugly mass of objects floating over their heads. I enjoy the game a lot more without those. And I don't really care about the speech and thought balloons because I'm making up my own dialogue in my head anyway.

I only turn headline effects back on when I need information I can only get by mousing over something, or when I need to adjust the room lights (because for some reason that only works when the headline effects are on). Otherwise, they are turned off all the time.