Clickity-Clacking Crap
Everyone has crossed BuzzFeed at least once or twice. Maybe even some of you have taken at least one of their quizzes wondering which Kardashian you’re most like. I’m guilty of taking some of those quizzes myself(apparently I’m supposed to be in Gryffindor, I will marry Sterling K. Brown and I am most like Chandler Bing). They have “mastered” and helped to create this insane desire for lists and quizzes. They have learned how to make us click their clickbait and boy are they leveraging that really damn well.
I mean, once in a while, BuzzFeed will put out some awesome content. One of my favourites is the “Asian-Americans Re-create Iconic Magazine Covers”. They approach the subject by not making a horrible statement saying that white people need to step down for them, rather that they would like to stand at equal grounds with them. I think that’s a good way to approach it. No major controversies, just a good statement, a strong message and just voicing that opinion.
I won’t speak about their “news” section because, let’s face it, BuzzFeed isn’t the most reliable source of news and I would never go to research what happened in the world on BuzzFeed, I’d look towards Toronto Star for instance. But no other internet outlet has mastered the clickbait as well as BuzzFeed.
They first off manage to figure out how to leverage pretty much every major platform; Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. From there, they know how to make their content look appealing. They mastered the catchy title game and they figured out what type of topics will catch peoples’ eyes. Harry Potter, for instance, is a massive franchise so they capitalize on that; “What is your Hogwarts House?”, “29 Very Grown-Up Questions About The Harry Potter Series”, “Build Your Wand And We’ll Reveal Your Garbage Patronus”. Just using Harry Potter allows them to grab a number of eyes, have them stop and go “okay, maybe one quiz…” That’s all they need. People by nature are curious and when they see a short quiz that they can take to find out whether or not these people can guess things right, they just go in and take the quiz. Some are right and they get shocked, some are wrong and the laugh. Either way, they may see another quiz and take that one too, keeping them in a cycle for as long as that person will allow.
Then there’s the lists. They basically made the idea of listing things (ie 10 BEST THINGS TO DO IN TORONTO!) universal. I don’t doubt that the practice was done before they came along, but come on, what other website on the internet has that many lists on them? Not many. They break it down into these simple, easy to read lists, they add graphics to make it look pretty, fun and less intimidating. Our attention spans have gotten really short, so no one really wants to sit there and read pages after pages about the 5 things you can do to catch your crush’s attention. They just want you to break down the facts and tell me that I just have to put on red lipstick to do it. None of that fluff or science behind it. Just tell me.
The lists don’t just stop there. Their YouTube channel is full of lists. They might not always be titled “21 Tumblr Posts That’ll Make You Think, “Why Does This Exist?””, but they may say “How to get a guy to leave you alone”. That is just a visual list. They break the list idea down even further for you to the point where you just have to fixate your eyes to the screen and they will move the images for you, essentially read out the list of tips to you. We do less for what we think is the same amount of information. The quiz format right now won’t work so well on video form because either it requires too much clicking around to a chain of different videos which also takes way too long to produce, or people would have to write things down and keep track on their own, which requires too much work. Which is why I theorize that there are no quizzes on their YouTube channel. I subscribe to their channel for certain well produced segments like “Unsolved Mysteries”, but for the most part, if I am watching their videos it is because I need something so mindless to fill the void. I know a few people myself who do that.
By the end of the day, they are the masters of creating headlines that you want to click, quizzes you want to take and videos you want to watch. They control a lot of the clickbait world. They’ve even created other branches like “Tasty” that essentially spam your Facebook news feed with short video after short video showing different meals you can make either in one pot or very few steps. It’s honestly incredible how much they have managed to do in such a short period of time. I might not favour their company, despite participating in it more than I’d like to admit, but I respect the company in the magic of how well they have mastered the art of click-bait. I want to see how long it’ll take before their methods become completely stale and if they can adapt/create a new method of getting us to continue staying with them.
