{"id":6134,"date":"2014-05-26T00:01:45","date_gmt":"2014-05-26T07:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=6134"},"modified":"2014-05-24T13:23:20","modified_gmt":"2014-05-24T20:23:20","slug":"clickbait","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=6134","title":{"rendered":"Clickbait"},"content":{"rendered":"

Have you ever met the perfect word? It’s a word that describes something you can’t otherwise explain, or something you take a long time to describe but never feel you did a good job. For me, satisfaction has recently arrived when I learned the term clickbait<\/em>.
\n
\nIt’s such an awesome term!<\/p>\n

Mostly on Facebook, I deplored the kind of headlines that read:<\/p>\n

You’ll never guess what she wore to the prom!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Such a headline would be accompanied by some titillating image.<\/p>\n

When you click, of course, you get nothing but ads, maybe a few pop-up windows. Every link seems to open in its own window, with more and more ads.<\/p>\n

The clickbait is a tease. It’s not designed to expand your knowledge or even entertain you. The clickbait’s purpose is to pimp clicks.<\/p>\n

Other great clickbait headlines:<\/p>\n

You won’t believe your eyes! This is the most amazing thing!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What this little girl said about her soldier dad is priceless.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This mom tells the school board what everyone is thinking.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you think this is odd, wait until you see what happened next!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Why is it so important for the clickbait to work?<\/p>\n

Because page-hits amount to money in the online world. If you can get 50,000 people to visit your web site, advertisers reward you greatly. So the idea is to hype up something that would otherwise be uninteresting, and get people to click, click, click!<\/p>\n

Another, more nefarious reason: To get you to sign up for something you might not otherwise want. You get on a mailing list. Such actions may expose your online account to malware or porn. Yes, it’s my old nemesis, human engineering<\/em> again. After all, which would you rather click on:<\/p>\n

Sign up for annoying spam<\/em><\/p>\n

Or:<\/p>\n

Eight things you must have to survive the coming economic collapse<\/em><\/p>\n

In the big picture, I believe clickbaiting is a phase. Sensationalist headlines once sold a lot of newspapers — way, way back in the heydey of yellow journalism. But today, even the tabloids shy away from the shocking, “You must open this issue or the puppy will die” type of headlines. That’s because, after a while, they fail to work.<\/p>\n

A human being can only handle so much. At a saturation point, people become desensitized. Eventually, overstimulus has no impact. In some cases, it actually becomes annoying.<\/p>\n

So I predict that the clickbait phase will pass. Not before going over the top, of course.<\/p>\n

Now hurry up and buy more of my books and you’ll learn about Obama’s secret plans for America!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I hate ’em.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6134"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6142,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6134\/revisions\/6142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}