#TheDJsOpinion: Why Click Bait Is Dangerous
…slides headphones off…*
“… I’m just wondering who tf is gonna give Soulja boy 400 mill…”
Ok, so I’m new to this writing game, right? I see headlines all the time. Outlandish ones, hilarious ones, straightforward ones with no punchlines. The aggravating thing to me is when you see headlines from well respected publications fall for the foolishness too. Please understand…again…I’m new here to this journalistic game. There are a lot of writers (who I damn sure respect) that I want to say have been fooled by news headlines too. It’s a learning process for me here, let me live. Before I get started, let me get a few of MY definitions out of the way first.
- Information Age — an era where you have no business to not do your own damn research when it comes to news that is being presented to your ears and eyes, which STILL ultimately results in whether you want to believe it or not.
- “Think Piece” — a lengthy, or brief, article or journal entry that is to encourage readers to have discussions on VALUABLE writing that comes from the text being presented.
- Social Media News — where Tweets, Instagram photos, and Facebook page posts are headline worthy.
- Fact Checking — seeing information that may or may not be accurate and double checking a plethora of resources to see if they are TRUTH.
- “We were all rooting for you” — Tyra Banks captivating words that have become a phenomenon to say once you see someone make a paramount mistake.
Case in point: Remember when Soulja Boy raced on the net and said he snagged a 400 million dollar deal with World Poker Fund Holdings?
I really wanted that to happen. No seriously, I did. I was thinking to myself, why would a guy, who hasn’t smelled the airwaves on a consistent basis since this Kiss Me Thru The Phone, or kept the streets living since wearing bandanas with Gucci, lie about receiving an endorsement? I mean he was on the way to a nice comeback with the writing credit on Beyonce’s album, he was alleged to be nominated for a GRAMMY, and then the deal of all deals where it was Soulja Boy who could stand tall and “not be fucked with.”
Pretty amazing stuff, right? Then I saw the headline (paraphrasing by the way)… “Soulja Boy inks $400 Million Dollar Deal.”
Seems like that makes sense, right? This is Soulja Boy. One of the first Hip Hop artists who introduced us to YouTube. One of the first artists who campaigned for Xbox LIVE. Had an endorsement deal with Swisher Sweets. Why would someone like Soulja Boy, who’s dropped 5 volumes of King Soulja that hasn’t surfaced a single, lie about money coming in?
All because we didn’t due our extended research to find out this is a sham. Click bait is a dangerous thing out here ladies and gents. Everyone falls for a headline. It sucks because sometimes the headline seems so convincing. Then there are times where you’re shocked that major online publications run anything they see on Social Media just to be apart of a conversation that started with one lie. Even when there is no fact checking involved. It’s amazing how far we’ve come to be wanting of so much information that fact checking is still one of the major problems in consuming information.
“We were all rooting for you.” Well, shit…at least I was.
*…slides headphones back on…*
