Media Blog #5

I just want to address clickbait for a minute because it is incredibly annoying and detracts from real content and substance. Personally, it detracts from the experience of "surfing the web" and makes life more annoying and it would make the internet a better place if clickbait were to go away and die in a hole or something like that.

Just for those of you who don't know, clickbait is any online material with misleading titles that make you want to read the story, the only purpose being to get lots of views. Clickbait is often characterized by titles appealing to basic human desires like curiosity, greed, etc. If you want to be able to spot out clickbait without a hitch, look for titles that are vague and suggestive of some kind of revolutionary information or something big.

It adds to the clutter of the media.
There are a lot of links in all websites that allow us to surf the web at blazing speeds as one article or editorial leads to the next, all connected in a web of information. Clickbait is a dead end. Stories with misleading titles that in no way reflect the often lackluster content do not offer a way forwards as often the websites with clickbait articles often only link to more clickbait. Furthermore, as clickbait becomes more and more common on every kind of website, it slowly starts to ebb out articles and websites with actual substance. Just like advertisements and popup ads, it slowly makes using the internet more and more grueling as lines of text become shorter, large margins filled with ads or articles made to distract us. Just as advertising has become more like clutter, clickbait is beginning to clutter as websites competing for your attention have to resort to frequency to try and generate views, spreading to the farthest reaches of the internet for their own space to put their links and trying to squeeze between other content in already crowded websites.

Potentially Damaging the Internet
The internet relies on people contributing and putting new information and news in an accessible location for all of us to see and learn from. The internet relies on a streamlined process through which we can gather this information in order to make it more appealing than a newspaper or a library. As clickbait makes it harder to sift though information and links for real substance, the functionality of the internet is damaged. If the internet becomes too crowded with junk to the point where sifting links to faulty information and news stories takes more time than reading the newspaper or going to a library, people will stop using the internet altogether. The internet relies on the worldwide community all pitching in information and if the community starts to disband, the internet becomes useless. Like a dead social media site.

It Can Be Stopped!
Clickbait is perpetuated because the people that create it are paid by advertisers looking for new places to put up their own ads. The reason advertisers put their ads up on websites with clickbait is because people are stupid enough to click on the links to clickbait. Clickbait is perpetuated by our willingness to fall for it because without the clicks, clickbait isn't profitable. If we all want to stop the clutter of clickbait, we all just need to make a conscious effort not to be fooled into thinking that there is an easy way to make six figures working from home, or that there is some secret weight loss trick nutrition experts don't want us to know about. If we all can try really hard to avoid that simple left click, we can rid of clickbait forever.