Clickbait: The New Headline

What I have surmised through this course thus far is that when considering writing as a profession, the core goal is to provide words or content with carefully selected language, which reveals specific information that is easily understood (at the very least by your intended audience). Regardless of what your field may be, you have to know whom you are writing for and how to get the point across successfully and quickly.

Now, from our brief introduction to the world of writing, and after reading the “Life as the Voice of Facebook” article from The Huffington Post, I have been thinking more and more on the ideas, slogans, and titles that are vital, not only the world of writing, but just in our world as American consumers in general. We are constantly bombarded with news, “news,” ads, links, media, and ideas through the fast moving world of technology that we, as students, revolve around. What I found most interesting however, is how this content is passed along, and how that concept has evolved into what it is today. Our headlines, subject lines, articles, everything presented to us, even emails from our head of university are often clickbait. They are each judiciously chosen words used to get and maintain our attention.

Every company, corporation, and industry relies on the ability to pull in the consumer. How do they do that? They produce a name, an ad, a headline that they think is the most liable to reel you in. And in this era, as most places are coming to learn, the Internet is the most likely place to do this. To be effective they have to come up with something captivating, something to get you to click on the link. This is where the career end of writing comes into play. Places like BuzzFeed employ large numbers of people simply to come up with ridiculous clickbait titles: “21 Israeli Foods That Will Make You Say ‘This Israeli Good,’” or “How Popular Are Your Little Debbie Opinions?” They produce silly, quippy lines directed at young people who are probably procrastinating. This is a really obvious example, but even highly reputable channels of news like BBC contain titles that call for notice like, “One Night He Started to Strangle Me.” Even our own university sends out emails with the subject lines reading things like “What Does the 1812 Overture TASTE Like?” What does that even mean? I don’t know, but now I’m interested. And that is exactly how cllickbait works, and why it has been integrated into almost every outlet we have come to rely on for information.

You can check out this website for some particularly absurd clickbait.