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Ever clicked on something like this?
You must have noticed how eye-catching titles and name-dropping of random celebrities are flooding your social media feed and literally every other surface on the internet. Even if it’s a reputable news outlet, you will find titles that shock you and make you want to click, even if you know that eventually you will be disappointed.
Yet you still click. Yet it still works.
What Is Clickbait?
Since 2015 clickbait is a term in Merriam-Webster Dictionary: “something (such as a headline) designed to make readers want to click on a hyperlink, especially when the link leads to content of dubious value or interest.”
Clickbait is nothing more than a headline that overpromises and leads to an article that underdelivers. It sparks curiosity and drives traffic, but it leads to sub-par content that the reader spends less than 15 seconds with.
Since the beginning of journalism, the headlines serve the objective to increase sales more than to deliver objective facts. Even in the earliest days, going back to as early as the late 19th century, using overpromising headlines was the way how newspapers battled for their readers — as sensational titles will attract more readers and thus lead to more profit.
The first modern-day clickbait title was one of a story in the New York Post that read: Headless Body in Topless Bar, followed by the subtitle: Gunman forces woman to decapitate tavern owner. It was…
