I have a confession to make. Last night at approximately
1 .30 in the morning, I was lying in bed, you
know, blue light blasting into my retinas, and
I saw a link. It was a picture of a child star
I haven't thought about since maybe 1998, and
the headline was just three words, you won't
believe. And let me guess, you clicked. I clicked.
Of course I clicked. I mean, I had to know. And
was the result believable? Yes. It was completely,
utterly mundane. They just, you know, grew up
and became a real estate agent. But in that moment.
I was possessed. Yeah. Welcome back to the Deep
Dive. I'm your host. And today we are tackling
the very thing that stole, I don't know, a good
10 minutes of my sleep last night. We are talking
about the Internet's favorite trap, clickbait.
It's the mosquito of the digital age. It really
is. We all claim to hate it. We roll our eyes
at it. We mock the one weird trick ads. And yet
the numbers, which we're definitely going to
get into, suggest that we are all collectively.
addicted to it. Well, it's a fascinating paradox,
isn't it? We say we want high quality, nuanced
information, but our thumbs, our thumbs vote
for the sensational. So today isn't just about
making fun of bad headlines, though. Let's be
honest. We will definitely be doing some of that.
It's a deep dive into the mechanics of attention.
We're going to look at the psychology that makes
that curiosity gap so. So painful to ignore.
We're going to trace the history back way further
than I expected, like long before the Internet
even existed. And we really have to look at the
economics. Because that headline you clicked
last night wasn't an accident. It was the tip
of a very large, very expensive iceberg designed
to monetize your, well, your cognitive vulnerabilities.
That makes me feel slightly better about my lack
of willpower. It's not me. It's the system. Well,
let's not let you off the hook entirely just
yet. We'll definitely get to the question of
agency later. But to start, we really need to
define what we are even talking about, because
in preparing for this, I realized the definition
itself is like the subject of a massive war in
the media industry. Yeah, I saw that in the sources.
There's this whole debate. Is a headline clickbait
just because it's interesting or does it have
to be a lie? Exactly. Is it hype or is it fraud?
OK, let's unpack this. So if we look at the word
itself, clickbait. It's incredibly visceral.
It's an aggressive term. It comes, obviously,
from fishing. Which, when you really stop and
think about it, is a pretty dark analogy for
how we consume content. It is. I mean, think
about the mechanics of fishing. You have a hook.
That hook is sharp, it is dangerous, and its
sole purpose is to capture the fish. And no fish
in its right mind is going to bite a bare metal
hook. Right. If I see a bear link that just says,
we want to show you ads so we make money, I'm...
You know, I'm swimming right past that. Precisely.
So you have to disguise the hook. You put a worm
on it. You put a shiny lure on it. You create
the illusion of value a meal. The fish bites
the meal, but the reality is the hook. And in
this analogy, the meal is the headline or like
the thumbnail image, and the hook is the actual
page view. Yes. The publisher needs you to swallow
the hook to follow the link so they can serve
that impression to the advertiser. Once you are
on the page, you're caught. Whether you enjoy
the content is, well, it's actually secondary
to the fact that you arrived. That's the core
cynicism of it all. But there's a specific psychological
trigger that makes the bait work so well. It's
not just, ooh, shiny. It's something called the
curiosity gap. And I was reading up on this.
It's actually rooted in some pretty heavy behavioral
science. It is. Yeah. This concept was largely
popularized by George Lowenstein, who's a behavioral
economist at Carnegie Mellon. He developed what's
called the information gap theory. And the theory
is basically that not knowing something physically
hurts. Right. Is that it? It's close. Lowenstein
argued that curiosity isn't just a mental state.
It's a form of. cognitive deprivation. When you
perceive a gap between what you know and what
you want to know, it creates this feeling of
deprivation. It's like an itch. That is exactly
what it feels like. When I saw that headline
about the child star, it wasn't that I genuinely
cared about that specific actor. It was that
the headline created a hole in my knowledge.
You won't believe what happened. Well, now I
have to know what happened or I can't go to sleep.
And that's the dopamine loop. The headline creates
a tension. That's the gap. Clicking the link
resolves the tension. It gives you a tiny little
hit of dopamine relief. It's not about gaining
knowledge. It's about scratching the itch. So
the classic clickbait structure. This man found
a box in his wall and you won't believe what
was inside. That's just weaponizing that sense
of deprivation. Perfectly. I mean, if the headline
said man finds old coins and wall, the gap is
closed. You have the information. You don't need
to click. By withholding that one key piece of
information. The what? They hold your attention
hostage. But okay, here is where I get stuck.
Because if the definition of clickbait is just
withholding information to create suspense, then
isn't every mystery novel clickbait? Isn't the
trailer for the new Marvel movie technically
clickbait? This is the absolute crux of the debate.
Where is the line between good storytelling and,
you know, manipulation? And this isn't just an
academic question. This was the central conflict
between two giants of the Internet age, BuzzFeed
and Facebook. Right. This was back around 2014,
wasn't it? The golden age of lists. The era of
the listicle, exactly. And Ben Smith, who was
the editor in chief of BuzzFeed at the time,
made a very famous, very public defense of his
company. He argued that BuzzFeed did not do clickbait.
Which, that sounds insane. I mean, BuzzFeed was
the factory that built this stuff. Listen to
his logic for a second. Smith defined clickbait
very, very strictly as dishonesty. He said, clickbait
is when you promise one thing and deliver another.
So the bait and switch. Exactly. He used a specific
example. Imagine a headline that says, a five
-year -old girl raised enough money to take her
father, who has terminal cancer, to Disney World.
Okay. Yeah, that grabs me. It's emotional. It's
specific. I'd probably click. It's absolutely
designed to go viral. But Smith's argument was
this. Is the story actually about that? If you
click the link and you read a true, well -reported
story about that girl and her father, then the
headline isn't bait. It's just a good headline.
It delivered on its promise. I see his point.
He's saying, don't blame us for packaging the
truth in an interesting way. Exactly. He's basically
saying that if the content itself is good, then
the headline is justified no matter how emotional
it is. But wait, hang on. I'm not sure I buy
that completely. Because even if the story is
true, isn't there something a little manipulative
about the way it's framed? I mean, if you are
explaining a personal tragedy just to get me
to view an ad for car insurance, that feels slimy.
You know, even if facts are straight. And that
is precisely where Facebook came down on the
issue. Facebook realized that their users felt
manipulated, regardless of whether the story
was technically true, so they defined clickbait
differently. How so? For them, it was about headlines
that encourage clicking but don't tell you what
you will see. The you won't believe who just
died style of headline. Exactly that. Facebook
argued that withholding the core information
is the problem. Even if the person who died is
a major celebrity, making me click just to find
out who it is creates a bad user experience.
It wastes my time. It forces me to pay a click
tax just to get the basic facts that should have
been in the headline. Right. And the expert consensus
now, well, it usually leans toward the disappointment
factor. The most functional definition of clickbait
today is a headline that intentionally over promises
and under delivers. So it's about the ratio of
promise to delivery. Right. If I promise you
the secret to eternal life and the article says
eat more kale, that is 100 percent clickbait.
Because the gap between the promise, which is
immortality, and the delivery, which is vegetables,
is massive. And that disappointment, that feeling
of being tricked, is what erodes trust over time.
Yes. But, you know, talking about trust and sensationalism,
we tend to treat this as a purely modern problem.
Right. We act like the Internet came along and
ruined the news. But when we looked into the
history for this. Yeah. Wow. We are not the first
generation to deal with it. Oh, not even close.
Not by a long shot. If we connect this to the
bigger picture, clickbait is just the latest
technology for a very, very ancient practice.
To really get it, we have to talk about the 1890s
and the yellow journalism wars. This is one of
my favorite parts of media history. This is Pulitzer
versus Hearst, right? The big newspaper barons.
The titans of the New York press, Joseph Pulitzer
of the New York World, and William Randolph Hearst
of the New York Journal. And it's so funny. We
think of Pulitzer now as this highbrow prize
for excellence in journalism. Which is deeply
ironic because back then he was fighting a dirty,
brutal war for circulation numbers. These papers
were fighting for street sales. They needed people
walking down the street to see a headline and
buy the paper right then. So the front page was
the thumbnail. The front page was the thumbnail.
Exactly. And they didn't have algorithms. They
had newsboys shouting the headlines on street
corners. So the headlines had to be loud. They
developed a style that focused almost entirely
on crime, on scandal, disaster, and just wild
exaggeration. The sources mentioned the Yellow
Kid. That's where the name comes from, isn't
it? Yeah, that's right. Hogan's Alley was this
very early, very popular comic strip. It featured
a kid in a yellow nightshirt. It was just wildly
popular. And both papers fought over the cartoonist
Richard Outcalt. The competition was so fierce
that the papers themselves were just dubbed the
yellow press. But it wasn't just cartoons. I
mean, they were actually fabricating news stories
from whole cloth. And this is where it gets really
dangerous. The most famous example is the sinking
of the USS Maine in 1898. The American battleship
exploded in Havana Harbor, Cuba. Right. And at
first, nobody knew why it happened. All the evidence
now points to it likely being an accidental coal
bunker explosion. But that's a boring headline.
Coal dust accidentally ignites. Who's buying
that paper? But Spanish mine blows up our ship.
Now that sells. Hearst's paper immediately ran
illustrations, completely fake illustrations
of Spanish mines with cables attached to the
ship. They ran the headline. Destruction of the
warship Maine was the work of an enemy. They
had zero proof, absolutely none. But it whipped
the American public into such a frenzy that it
arguably pushed the country directly into the
Spanish -American War. That is, that's literally
clickbait starting a war. It is the ultimate
consequence of engagement optimization. They
optimized for outrage and they got a war out
of it. That really puts our current problems
into perspective. At least, you know, a quiz
titled, which potato are you? isn't launching
any missiles. Not yet, anyway. Let's hope. Please
don't jinx it. But there's another historical
term that came up in the sources, checkbook journalism.
Right. This is kind of a precursor to the modern
celebrity gossip ecosystem. It's the practice
of paying sources for information, often without
any real verification. Which sounds fine on the
surface, until you realize that if you pay for
dirt, people will just manufacture dirt for you.
Exactly. If I offer $10 ,000 for a story about
a politician having an affair, suddenly everyone
has a story about that politician having an affair.
It completely removes the verification process.
Howard Kurtz from the Washington Post wrote that
this tabloid culture erased the old definitions
of news. It prioritized the tawdry over the true
simply because the tawdry was profitable. And
that right there, that's the bridge to the Internet,
the profit model. Because why do websites publish
clickbait? It's not because they enjoy being
annoying. It's because it pays. You have to follow
the money. Always. So let's break down the economics
of this. Because I think people generally understand
ads, but they might not understand the sheer
scale of it all. So the basic unit of the modern
internet economy is the impression. When a page
loads and an ad is shown to a user, tiny fraction
of a cent changes hands. To make real money,
you need millions or even billions of impressions.
Which means you need millions and millions of
clicks. And you need them cheaply. Think about
it. If you spend three months investigating a
complex financial scandal that costs thousands
of dollars in reporter salaries, legal fees,
and so on. If you write a list of 10 cats that
look like Hitler, that takes 20 minutes. If both
articles get the same number of clicks... The
cats are infinitely more profitable. Infinitely.
But it gets even more sophisticated when we look
at video platforms like YouTube. The algorithm
there has evolved in a very specific way, and
it has completely shaped the content we see.
The YouTube face, we've all seen it. The exaggerated
open mouth, the wide eyes, the hands on the cheeks
pointing at something with a big red arrow. That
exists for a very specific reason, high arousal
emotion. The sources highlight a really important
statistic that was revealed at the Consumer Electronics
Show. YouTube executives admitted that most watch
time on the platform does not come from people
actively searching for things. Wait, really?
So it's not people typing in how to fix my sink?
Well, that happens, but the vast majority of
time people spend on the site is spent watching
videos that the recommendation engines serve
to them. It comes from the Up Next sidebar or
the homepage. So the robot is the DJ. It's choosing
the music for us. The robot is the DJ, the gatekeeper,
and the kingmaker. And that robot looks at two
main things above all else. Click -through rate,
or CTR, and watch time. CTR is just the percentage
of people who see the thumbnail and actually
click on it. Right. If your video is shown to
100 people on their homepage and 10 of them click,
you have a 10 per CTR. If only one clicks, you
have a 1 per CTR. The algorithm is absolutely
ruthless. If your CTR is low, it just stops showing
your video to people. It assumes the video is
bad, or at least that the packaging is bad. So
you have to be sensational. If you write a calm,
accurate title like, My Thoughts on the New iPhone.
And your competitor writes, the iPhone is dead.
And they get the click. You lose. You basically
vanish from the platform. It creates an intense
evolutionary pressure. It's survival of the loudest.
Creators aren't necessarily trying to be deceptive
all the time. They are trying to survive in an
ecosystem, an algorithm that fundamentally rewards
hype. It's a constant arms race. And the weapon
is the thumbnail. And this all spills over into
what the platforms now call engagement bait.
This is a little different from just getting
you to click. This is about manipulating you
once you are already there on the page. Oh, this
is the stuff that drives me up the wall on Facebook.
Let's talk about the taxonomy of bait. Yeah.
We have a list here, and I feel like I need to
complain about them one by one. Please, the floor
is yours. Vent. Okay, first one. Vote baiting.
This is when they post a picture and say, like
for pizza, love for tacos. It seems so innocent,
right? Just a fun little poll. But think about
the algorithm. It just sees engagement. It sees
you reacting. It doesn't know you're just voting
for tacos. It thinks, wow, this user feels very
strongly about this content. I should show this
post to all of their friends. It hacks the social
graph. It forces my friends to see my taco preference
just so the page gets more reach. It feels so
cheap. It is cheap and effective. Okay, next
one. Tag baiting. Tag friend who looks like this
potato. or tag a friend who would do this. This
is arguably worse because it drags a non -consenting
third party into the interaction. You are basically
using your social capital, your friendship, to
feed the page's reach. And then there's share
baiting. This is the guilt trip one. Share this
if you love your mom. Keep scrolling if you have
no soul. That is just pure emotional manipulation,
plain and simple. It exploits social anxiety.
Nobody wants to be the person who hates their
mom, so you share it. It weaponizes your own
self -image against you. But the worst one, the
one that I think is actually damaging to the
world, is rage baiting. Ah, yes. The nuclear
option of engagement. Explain how this works,
because I feel like we are just drowning in this
every single day. Well, psychologically, high
arousal emotions travel much faster online than
low arousal ones. Sadness is a low arousal emotion.
Contentment is low arousal. But anger, anger
is pure high octane energy. It makes you want
to do something. And on the Internet, that something
is usually commenting. I can't believe they said
this or this is completely wrong. Exactly. So
publishers will intentionally write a headline
that is wrong or offensive or incredibly stupid
specifically to get you to correct them in the
comments. The typo strategy. I've seen this a
million times. They spell a word wrong in the
title on purpose so that 500 people will flood
the comments with, you spelled their wrong, you
idiot. And the algorithm doesn't care why they
are commenting. It can't tell the difference
between praise and outrage. It just sees 500
comments and thinks, wow, this is a hot topic.
Let's put it to the top of everyone's feed. Go
viral. So we are literally rewarding stupidity.
We are rewarding engagement, and it turns out
that stupidity is very, very engaging. Okay,
so talk to me about the aesthetic of all this,
specifically the chum box. Ah, the bottom of
the internet. The digital gutter. You know exactly
what I'm talking about. You finish reading a
legitimate news article, you scroll down past
the end of the text, and suddenly it's a grid
of the most grotesque, bizarre images imaginable.
A 90 -year -old woman looks like this now. Doctors
are begging you to throw out this one vegetable.
And it's always a picture of, like, a diseased
foot or something covered in holes. It's horrifying.
They call that the chum box. And the name comes
from chum, which is the fish bait made of chopped
up fish guts and blood that you throw in the
water to attract sharks. Gross, but very accurate.
These are ad networks like Taboola or Outbrain.
They use a very specific visual language. It's
always designed to appeal to prurient interest
or greed. Prurient meaning sex. Sex, bodily fluids,
the gross out factor. get -rich -quick schemes,
it appeals directly to the lizard brain. They
use numbered lists and extreme information gaps.
They're the absolute bottom feeders of the digital
ecosystem, but they are incredibly profitable
for the news sites that host them. It's amazing
to me that a legitimate newspaper will have high
-quality, Pulitzer -winning journalism up top,
and then it'll sell the basement to the toe fungus
people for ad revenue. It just shows you how
desperate the revenue model for online news has
become over the years. But there is a darker
side to this curiosity gap than just bad ads
and gross -out pictures. The sources we looked
at mention fishing and malice. Yes, and this
is important. We shouldn't think of clickbait
as just an annoyance. It is a genuine vulnerability.
And hackers use the exact same psychology to
exploit us. The classic, check out this video
of you, Scam. Exactly. If I send you an email
that says... Attached is the quarterly financial
report. You might open it, you know, eventually.
But if I send an email with the subject line,
urgent, is this you in this photoshopped image?
Quo, your panic and your curiosity completely
override your logical brain. You click the link
and boom malware is installed on your machine.
The curiosity gap is a security flaw in the human
brain. And there is no software patch for it.
That is a terrifying thought. But let's zoom
out from the individual danger to the... The
societal danger, we touched on rage bait a minute
ago. Yeah. But when you scale that up to national
politics, what happens? Well, here is where it
gets really fascinating and deeply concerning.
We enter the realm of what's now called post
-truth politics. That phrase gets thrown around
a lot. What does it actually mean in this specific
context? It means that the emotional impact of
a statement begins to matter more than its factual
accuracy. Clickbait culture has trained us over
years to react to the headline, not to the evidence
within the article. Slate described the current
media environment as an aggregation of outrage.
That's a heavy concept. It means the entire ecosystem
is designed to find, collect and amplify whatever
makes people the maddest. Nuance doesn't go viral.
A headline like politician proposes complex tax
reform with potential pros and cons gets zero
clicks. Politician wants to destroy your savings
and steal your home. That gets a million clicks
and shares. So the incentive structure itself
eliminates the middle ground. It pushes everyone
to the extremes. Katherine Viner, the editor
in chief of The Guardian, wrote a really powerful
piece about this. She said that chasing down
cheap clicks at the expense of accuracy and veracity
undermines the fundamental value of journalism.
If the truth is boring and lies are profitable,
the market will always favor the lies. And we
see this across the political spectrum. This
is not a left or right issue. Absolutely not.
The sources are very clear on this. They list
sites from Breitbart on the right to the Huffington
Post on the left, from Salong to Town Hall. The
business model is completely politically agnostic.
Both sides discovered they could profit by producing
these short, shareable pieces that offer simple,
immediate moral judgments. It's confirmation
bias. As a service. That's a perfect way to put
it. They aren't trying to inform you. They are
trying to affirm what you already believe and
crucially make you angry at the other side. And,
you know, I've noticed a new weird defense mechanism
recently. People use the word clickbait as a
shield now. What do you mean? Like if a news
outlet publishes a story that is critical of
a politician I happen to like, my first instinct
and the first instinct of many people is to just
say, oh, that's just clickbait. and dismiss it,
even if it's a well -researched, thousand -word
investigative piece. That is a very, very dangerous
development because if clickbait just becomes
a synonym for news I don't like, then we've completely
lost the ability to distinguish truth from fiction.
The real clickbait has flooded the zone with
so much garbage that we've started to distrust
the real thing, too. It's the boy who cried wolf,
but the wolf is an algorithm. Precisely. And
we're all tired of hearing the shouting. OK,
this is getting a little depressing. I feel like
we are trapped in this giant Skinner box, just
pressing buttons for dopamine while the world
outside burns. Is there any good news? Is there
a backlash? Have people started fighting back?
There is, yes. And delightfully, the resistance
started with comedy. Satire is always the best
weapon. Do you remember the website ClickHole?
Oh, I love ClickHole. It's from the same people
as The Onion, right? Yes. It launched around
2014 at the peak of all this. It was a direct
parody of... sites like Upworthy and BuzzFeed.
They took the curiosity gap formula and pushed
it to its absolute absurd limit. They had those
amazing headlines like six kinds of hay that
are horse food. Or my personal favorite. This
stick of butter is left out at room temperature.
You won't believe what happens next. And you
click it and it's just a time lapse video of
the butter melting. It was so brilliant because
it was deconstructing the joke. It was holding
a mirror up to all of us and saying, look how
stupid this format is. Look what you're clicking
on. And it really worked. It helped break the
spell for a lot of people. It made us all realize
how formulaic and predictable the manipulation
had become. But we can't just laugh it away.
The tech companies themselves had to step in,
too, didn't they? And they did. We gave Facebook
a bit of a hard time earlier, but in 2014, they
made a massive change to the newsfeed algorithm
that actually did help a lot. This was the big
shift from just counting clicks to measuring
time spent. Correct. Before 2014, a click was
a click. If you click on a link, the algorithm
considered the article. good. But Facebook realized
that people were clicking, immediately realizing
it was bait, and then bouncing right back to
Facebook in a few seconds. The bounce rate, a
sign of a dissatisfied user. So Facebook's engineers
started measuring how long you stayed off site.
If you clicked a link and stayed on that page
for three minutes, they assumed you were actually
reading the article. That's a signal of quality.
If you came back in three seconds, that's a signal
of bait. And they started algorithmically punishing
the bait. That actually explains why we saw that
big shift toward long form content for a while.
You started seeing these huge in -depth articles
everywhere. It forced publishers to actually
put something of value on the page. You couldn't
just trick people with the headline anymore.
You had to entertain or inform them enough to
keep them there. And then there were the ad blockers.
That was the consumers fighting back with code.
Yes. The rise of ad blockers completely destroyed
the revenue model for the cheapest, lowest effort
sites. If I can't show you the ads on my... page
your click is literally worthless to me this
pushed the entire industry toward native advertising
And sponsored content, right? Which is a whole
other can of worms, honestly. But in general,
for a sponsored article to work, it has to be
at least readable. A brand like Nike doesn't
want their logo to be associated with a chum
box style scam. They want high quality storytelling.
So the money started slowly flowing back toward
quality or at least better production value.
And we also have to give a shout out to the Save
You a Click heroes. on social media. The stop
clickbait communities. I love these people. They
see a headline that says why this celebrity is
quitting Hollywood forever and they'll just comment
right below it. She's not. She's taking a two
month break to have a baby. Doing the Lord's
work. It's a public service. It's like a form
of community policing for information. It closes
the curiosity gap for everyone else so we don't
have to give the publisher the ad revenue. It's
a small but powerful way of reclaiming our collective
attention. So to recap, we've gone from fishing
hooks to the yellow journalism wars to the psychological
itch of the curiosity gap to the brutal logic
of the YouTube algorithm. And now to this weird
stalemate where we are all fighting the machines
with satire and ad blockers. It's really a journey
through the weirdest parts of human nature. Clickbait
isn't just a technological annoyance. It is a
mirror. It exploits the things that make us human.
Our intense curiosity, our desire for social
connection, and our unfortunate tendency toward
outrage. It's humbling, really. We like to think
we are these rational, logical beings making
informed decisions. But show us a picture of
a secret door found in a basement. And we just
turn into curious little monkeys who have to
click the button. We do. And if we connect all
this to the bigger picture, I want to leave you,
the learner, with a thought about agency. Go
on. We complain about clickbait. We say we hate
it. We say we want real news and deep, thoughtful
content. But the algorithms are just prediction
engines. At the end of the day, they are designed
to give us what we want. Or what we click on.
Which is their best proxy for what we want. If
clickbait is still prevalent, and believe me.
It is it means it is still working. It means
that despite all our complaints, we are still
clicking. So are you saying we're the villains
of our own story? We're the enablers. The algorithm
is just holding up a mirror to our own lack of
impulse control. The provocative thought is this.
Are we really mad at the beat or are we just
mad at ourselves for continuing to bite every
single time? That is. Deeply uncomfortable. And
I feel personally attacked regarding my 1 .30
a .m. browsing habits. As you should. But it's
a necessary question. If we want a better media
environment, we have to start by having better
clicking habits. We have to vote with our attention.
It's the only currency that matters online. Well,
on that very heavy note, I want to thank you,
the learner, for taking this deep dive with us.
Hopefully the title of this discussion didn't
overpromise. I think we delivered. I think so,
too. Thank you for listening all the way to the
end. You've proven that human attention spans
aren't quite dead yet. And check your sources
before you share. And please, think before you
click. We'll see you in the next deep dive. Welcome
to The Debate. So today we're going to be dissecting
a mechanism that, well, it pretty much dictates
the diet of our digital age. And that is, of
course, clickbait. It's a term we all use, usually
as an insult, to describe content that's just
engineered to demand your attention. Right. But.
You could also argue it's the very engine that
keeps the free internet running. And that is
exactly the tension we're exploring today. I'll
be arguing that clickbait is inherently a form
of digital deception. It's a bait and switch
that prioritizes metrics over truth and ultimately
erodes trust. And I'll be taking the dissenting
view. I think the term is defined far too broadly.
My position is that high engagement headlines
are not actually clickbait if they're factually
accurate. I think often what we dismiss as bait
is simply a rational and effective response to
the economics of attention. Well, let's look
at the definitions, because the specific wording
really reveals the problem here. If we use the
frameworks from, say, Merriam -Webster or dictionary
.com, clickbait isn't just about being catchy.
It is defined by the quality of what you find
when you get there. It's content designed to
entice a click, specifically leading to material
of, and this is the quote, dubious value. Dubious
value. I mean, that's pretty subjective, isn't
it? Okay, perhaps. But the mechanism itself isn't
subjective. The term, it relies on that fishing
analogy for a reason. Bait implies a hook that's
been disguised by an enticement. You know, the
fish thinks it's getting food, but it's actually
getting caught. It's a breach of this sort of
unspoken contract between the publisher and the
reader. The goal isn't to inform. It's to maximize
ad revenue by misrepresenting what's on the other
side of that link. I think that analogy collapses
when the food is actually real, though. I want
to bring in the argument made by Ben Smith, who
was the editor -in -chief of BuzzFeed back in
2014. He drew a really hard line between curiosity.
and deception. His point was that a headline
is only clickbait if it lies. That feels like
a pretty convenient distinction for the architect
of BuzzFeed to make, don't you think? Well, maybe,
but it is a functional one. Look, Smith used
a specific example, a headline about a five -year
-old girl raising money for her father's terminal
cancer treatment. Now, that is sensational. It
exploits emotion. It absolutely demands a click.
But if the article actually tells that story,
Smith argues it's not clickbait. It's just an
eye -catching presentation of the truth. If we
label every effective hook as bait, we're basically
criticizing storytelling just for being interesting.
But you're ignoring the psychological mechanism
being used to get that click. And this brings
us to the curiosity gap. This isn't just about
whether the story is technically true. It's about
how the user is being manipulated. You know,
Facebook, in their own technical efforts to downrank
clickbait, defined it as headlines that withhold
crucial information. They create this artificial
information gap that exploits a user's cognitive
need for closure. You aren't clicking because
you want the content. You're clicking to scratch
a psychological itch that the headline forced
upon you. I have to say, I find that curiosity
gap argument incredibly restrictive. I mean,
if we follow Facebook's logic that a headline
has to tell you exactly what you're about to
see, then a joke without a punchline is clickbait.
A movie trailer that doesn't show the ending
is clickbait. Withholding information is the
basis of all suspense. If I write, you won't
believe what happened, and then I show you something
that is genuinely unbelievable, I haven't exploited
you, I've entertained you. You may have entertained,
yes, but at what cost to the ecosystem? This
is the macro issue for me, the economic incentives.
When you prioritize the click above everything
else, you degrade the entire information environment.
Katherine Viner, the editor -in -chief at The
Guardian, she argued that chasing down cheap
clicks at the expense of accuracy and veracity
undermines the fundamental value of journalism.
It just creates a race to the bottom where the
only metric that matters is the click -through
rate, not the quality of understanding. But you're
blaming the players for the rules of the game.
We have to view this within the attention economy.
Look at the data that YouTube released at CES.
They revealed that 70 % of watch time on their
platform is driven by recommendations, by the
algorithm, not by people actively searching.
And the data also shows that videos with hyperbolic,
high -energy titles, they objectively have higher
click -through rates. So because the algorithm
rewards it, we should just accept it? No, because
it works. It becomes a survival mechanism. Creators
are just rationally optimizing for an algorithm
that favors engagement. If you write a dry academic
headline in an ecosystem that demands sticky
content, you will disappear. It isn't about degrading
the ecosystem with malice. It's about navigating
the reality that attention is a finite and very
valuable commodity. But that survival mechanism
has very deep roots in unethical practices. I
mean, we can draw a direct line from modern clickbait
right back to checkbook journalism and yellow
journalism from the late 19th century. Those
eras focused entirely on scandal mongering and
sensation just to sell papers. Slate described
the modern iteration of this as the aggregation
of outrage. And we see this everywhere with rage
baiting and political discourse. It's not just
harmless fluff. It's a tool used to polarize
people and profit from their moral judgments.
I think you have to distinguish between the extremes
and the norm. I mean, obviously, phishing or
using clickbait to spread malicious code, what
they call click fraud, is illegitimate. But the
market has a way of correcting for the aggressive
media practices you're worried about. We saw
a massive backlash starting around 2014. Ad blockers
became hugely popular. The algorithms were updated
to filter out low -quality content. We even saw
the rise of satirical sites like The Onion's
Clickhole, which parodied these forms so effectively
that it actually forced publishers to pull back.
The audience isn't stupid. They eventually learn
to identify the trap. They might learn, but the
trap just keeps evolving. So to summarize my
position, while I understand the economic pressures,
the term clickbait correctly identifies a pattern
of overpromising and underdelivering. Whether
it's a curiosity gap or rage baiting, it treats
the audience as a metric to be harvested, not
as a public to be informed. And I maintain that
while dishonesty is always wrong, dismissing
all sensational or curiosity -inducing content
as clickbait just ignores the reality of digital
media economics. If the headline catches your
eye and the content delivers on that promise,
then the label of clickbait is, I think, misapplied.
We should absolutely criticize fraud, but we
shouldn't punish curiosity. It is a difficult
line to walk in an internet built on sticky content.
It is, indeed. And it leaves us all to wonder
where the line between good marketing and outright
deception truly lies.