Personally, I Find Clickbait Headlines More Than Just a Little Annoying
Here Are 7 Examples (& I Especially Hate #3)
Yes, the headline here is a joke but it’s no joke that I really hate clickbait headlines. So how did they become so pervasive? You won’t find the answer to that question here, but I do hope you will end up with a takeaway or two.
I have an app on my phone called Flipboard. It’s essentially a mashup of curated articles in which the user selects the themes and Flipboard curates the feed. It’s essentially a news aggregator.
One of the worst for clickbait headlines is Inc. Magazine. Today it is the lead story in my feed with a headline that reads:
Recruiters Reveal the Buzzwords to Avoid on LinkedIn and How to Bett…
This kind of clickbait technique appears defensible because it looks like they ran out of room in the mashup. The reality is that so many of their headlines are this way that it appears deliberate, forcing you to click in order to see where they are taking you. I see this and immediately decide I won’t go there.
Here is a second example, same technique, also from Inc. Magazine.
33 Steve Jobs Quotes That Will Inspire You to Achieve Massive…
Massive what? Massive growth? Massive success? Massive wealth? And the answer is “Success” with the subhead that reads, “Number 11 will make you laugh.”
Are you kidding me? I hate this stuff. Change the numbers and the name of the famous quipster and you will get tomorrow’s Inc. Magazine story. 29 Bill Gates Quotes or 17 Warren Buffet Quotes, and Number 15 will make you barf.
Here’s another familiar clickbait technique. It is so overused that it, too, has become cliché.
It Took Jeff Bezos Exactly 2 Sentences to Teach a Major Lesson in Achieving Great Focus
Now frankly, if the title were different I might be interested, but I’m so put off by the technique here that I want to gag and use words that are normally not part of my vocabulary.
I’ve written about focus more than once for a couple publications, but did not stoop to such a click-baity headline. Why is this necessary? Is anyone measuring the clickthrough rates on these things? Once again it is Inc. Magazine. What a coincidence.
I scroll past a couple stories and come to another technique of the clickbait radicals. Use a word like Weird or Secret in your headline, like this:
Here’s a Secret Reason to Carry a Bandage Strip on Air Flights
Really? A secret reason? Why not just a plain old good reason? Suddenly I notice, this one is also an Inc. Magazine story.
OK, so now we venture into politics and this title pops as a typical example of another genre:
This vulnerable GOP senator just stood up to Trump — and gave an ominous warning to other Republicans
Why not just say who it is? Well, maybe because no one would care then.
Jussie Smollett is the current clickbait darling. Funny thing is, I never heard of him before. Now he’s everywhere and you can’t get away. Here’s today’s clickbait headline on Mr. Smollett, courtesy the dailywire.com:
Here’s What Jussie Smollet Wrote On $3,500 Check’s “Memo” Line
Really? Makes me want to start writing some creative little surprises on my own memo lines, just in case I ever become “an item” and journalists need new stories to write about.
When I used to get BuzzFeed on a daily basis it was apparent that their team had attended the Clickbait Headlines class at journalism school. This one, also found today on Flipboard, is typical.
18 Tweets That Prove How Incredibly Dumb Anti-Vaxxers Really Are
Actually, the Anti-Vaxx movement is a serious issue. I recently weighed in on it myself. The words “incredibly dumb” seem more than just demeaning though. The tone of the headline, in addition to it’s clickbait construction, is like wall-building rhetoric rather than bridge-building.
I’m curious what journalists like H.L. Mencken, Ambrose Bierce and Walter Lippmann would think of this Clickbait Craze. Then again, I’m sure sensational headlines are not entirely new. On more than one occasion they’ve been used to beat the drums of war, to inter Japanese in the Dakotas, to eliminate those nasty natives who wouldn’t just peaceably get off our land.
I like reading a good story, but if you need to use clickbait to grab me I’ll be moving on to a different bird feeder next tine.
