9 Reasons You Had to Click This Clickbait
So you took the bait. Now here are nine possible reasons why you couldn’t help yourself (there’s actually twelve, but that’s a bigger commitment than most people are willing to make):
1) The contractual obligation was unambiguous.
You were promised a list with an exact number of items. The cost of engagement was clear, and in this topsy-turvy world, small certainties offer big comfort.
2) The title had a hook.
It went meta and you think meta is clever.
3) You want to get jacked in under four weeks, too!
If this workout program can jack you like it jacked Hugh Jackman then you just gotta check it out! And even though Hugh only needed four weeks, you’ll give it six if it makes you a S’Wole-verine too!
4) Trump said what?!
This one’s time-sensitive (we hope), but Donald Trump doesn’t tone it down, he doubles down when it comes to saying crazy things. His time in the (inter)national spotlight has spawned a cottage industry of bloggers and watchdogs who catalogue all his insults according to the person or demographic insulted. The things he says are so cruel and crazy as to tip into the realm of morbid unintentional humor. You have to read to believe.
5) You were in the market for life hacks.
Everyone knows using things according to their design is boring. Fluffing eggs with a whisk is for wimps. Why not go all Tom Cruise on your omelette with a cocktail shaker? I mean, who hasn’t said: “You know what these eggs need? More mother-effing fluff!” (and who doesn’t savor the aftertaste of raw egg in his/ her gin martini?)
6) Like the rest of us, you’re susceptible to Trojan-Horse marketing,
and hence, you should know:
Sclable is a builder of digital business models, products, and programs for partners facing a unique challenge: Disruptions in their industry are forcing them to innovate and do so under a “now-to-market” deadline, but they lack the tools to build a game-changer. Using a rapid-prototyping method and an open tech stack, Sclable delivers game-changers, working business applications, in a matter of days, and fully-functional, launch-ready applications in under six months. Customers reap three main benefits: fail fast, learn fast, and new dynamics. This jumpstarts a culture of doing: Real results + greater efficiency = bigger profits.
[For more info, visit sclable.com]
7) Your soul’s got a hole in it.
Like most of us, you wake up in the morning hoping to be greeted by a world full of promise and very often you slouch into bed at night to dream your shattered dreams. Sure, it’s a little like putting a bandaid on the stump of a freshly severed limb, but clicklists offer fleeting distraction from your own malaise. The supply of ranked lists is endless: things to find cute, things to despise, things to pity, things to desire, etc.
8) Schadenfreude
We all feel inferior from time to time. Our inner voice, and plenty of outer voices tell us we could be doing a much better job at being who we are. So isn’t it nice to scroll through lists of people who look inferior to you, particularly people who were once superior to you, like Lindsay Lohan and MC Hammer?* These “50 Hollywood celebrities are completely broke” just like you, but at least you never had any money.
*In Hammer Time’s defense, you’ll never be superior to him in dancing, not even in your Hammer pants.
9) You’re at work.
You hate your job*, and you don’t know what to do with all your boredom and rage.
[*If you’re contemplating a career change, check out sclable.com/jobs.]
10) The sorrows of a minor Kardashian are so much more interesting than the suffering of thousands of natural- and/ or man-made-disaster victims.
Okay, so Kim Kardashian seems to have recently learned that the world’s cruelties can touch her too. But even if the story were about Khloe Kardashian having a hangnail operation, you know you would have clicked there before reading about Hurricane Matthew ravaging Haiti.
11) This wholesome celebrity has a sex tape, too!?
This discovery led to an internet search for a video torrent so you could mock a famous person for not being able to meet the production standards of a C-grade porno film using an iPhone. And again you were left crestfallen. What did you expect? These videos are shot by movie stars not star directors!
12) It’s the last bait you’ll take before getting back to productive stuff (you promise!).
Even though we should stop, we probably won’t. We shrug off our zombied-out gaze and wasted hours by rationalizing clickbait as a “guilty pleasure,” as a “harmless diversion” as “quirky quizzes,” as “useful conversation starters,” and so on. But in their simplicity, in their banality, these baits can lead to damage. They are the echo-chambers of our better and baser qualities, amplifying the things we want, want to be, and want to hurt.
They constitute what an old German philosopher called Gerede, idle chatter — but now in a virtual format that doesn’t even require our active participation. Our mouths, no longer encumbered by the burden of speech, are free to drool. Our slouched bodies become one with our desk chairs where we log more sitting hours than on our comfy couch (What would we say sitting next to the strangers we live with?!). Recumbent, dusted with chip crumbs, we remain frozen for hours except for the one finger we need to click, swipe and scroll. You may have noticed that this very text is baited. Did you click any links? Don’t feel bad if you did, but feel good if you didn’t.
Even to myself, my motivations for writing this piece are unclear, though they’ve grown clearer by writing, which is one of its benefits of producing your own language. On the one hand, I’ve been trying to say that clickbait does not deliver good, meaningful content, and on the other, I’ve been confessing that I’m as guilty as anyone of consuming loads of it. So this isn’t satire, where I set myself above an object of scorn; rather it aims for humor, where I/ we are the teller, the audience, and the butt of a soothing jest.
Another motivation was to throw my own words into the Internet’s din rather than to internalize more doses of din passively. My mind is very noisy most of the time, so I took a source of that noise — clickbait — and bent it to my will rather than bending once more to its. This motivation overlaps with a professional one. Time and tracking statistics will tell, but my guess is that this thought piece will generate more traffic and impressions than most others simply because I used a familiar and proven formula.
So a personal and professional experiment with form is afoot. If you’ll permit the conceit of aligning myself with true genius: Marcel Duchamp’s readymades taught us that we can give meaningless objects — or objects with a limited meaning — fresh, profound significance. A urinal can become a fountain. A clicklist can become a joke list or a list of aphorisms. It can also be the format and basis for meaningful content marketing.
If you made it this far, I salute you. Our attention spans are no longer built for 1000+ words, particularly after we are promised light entertainment. My apologies for going all serious and motivational-speaker and a little sentimental at the end. I’m out! Gotta go shake some eggs!
