10 things they don’t want you to know about clickbait (#6 will shock you)

If there’s anything we can learn about clickbait, it’s how to capture someone’s attention with just a line of text.

But what makes an article a clickbait article? And why are you so compelled to click on one, even though you know you’re just feeding the beast?

Good thing you’re here. I’m going to give you an education in clickbait… in just 10 points.

1. What is clickbait? We just don’t know.

The definition is increasingly foggy. Some of us will label anything we don’t like online as clickbait. Others, like BuzzFeed’s editor-in-chief Ben Smith, say it’s articles that don’t deliver on the claims their headlines make. Perhaps to you it’s a wider term to describe listicles or slideshows with juicy headlines and vapid content.

Generally, though, we can follow Wikipedia’s lead and define clickbait very broadly as content that is created specifically to get someone to click on it. The end goal is to get the most page views (and therefore, more ad revenue).

2. It preys on something called “The Curiosity Gap”

The curiosity gap is that space between what we know and what we want to know. “When you read these 19 shocking food facts, you’ll never want to eat again,” says a headline once published by Buzzvital (and several other sites, actually). The curiosity gap is here: it gives you just enough information to pique your interest and give you an idea what you’ll learn inside, but it doesn’t go so far as to reveal anything material. It leaves you wanting more, and begs the question, “what shocking food facts?” and “am I eating something gross?” which the article will (maybe) answer.

3. It also preys on your emotions

More heavy-handed headlines often throw in emotion phrase like “this will shock you” or “you won’t believe what happened next” to the same effect. Feelings of happiness, sadness, fear, you name it… they all make us more engaged with content. Either way, it’s no accident – these headlines are intentionally made for this.

4. We’ve endured clickbait, even before the internet

Maybe you’ve heard the term “yellow journalism” before. It stems from a time in U.S. history when newspapers competed for readership using sensationalized and exaggerated headlines… and straight up false information. This was driven mainly by a rivalry between Joseph Pulitzer (owner of the New York World) and William Randolph Hearst (owner of the New York Journal) in the late 1890s.

Or think about old-timey TV or radio shows that begged you not to touch that dial because you won’t believe what’s coming up after this commercial break! While not exactly a headline, the same idea of appealing to an emotion or our curiosity gap to get us through an advertiser’s message is there.

5. It’s not inherently evil

While I like to imagine the Upworthys and Buzzfeeds of the world sitting around a large conference table in a darkened room, petting complacent felines and laughing maniacally about destroying the internet as we know it, I’m pretty sure that’s not how things actually went down.

Instead, it comes down to editors and curators looking to gain traction based on data. What performs best with the target audience? What gets the most shares? There’s a deeply rooted psychological reason we click on these articles, and one could argue that, as long as the content delivers on the promise, we’re all good here. That said, clickbait has been used for lots of ends – some entertainment, some cultural and some political.

6. It’s actually kind of a precise science

Think about it: you’re tasked with coming up with a snappy headline that captures our increasingly divided attention, for a readership incredibly varied in almost every demographic measure, based on trends that live and die within hours. Okay, some things never get old (“These kittens meet water for the first time. What they do next will melt your heart”), but in the meme-loving sphere of the interwebs, your headline might be old before it’s had a chance to make the rounds.

That’s why teams of curators at sites like Upworthy trawl through the web for story ideas, that then go through rounds of testing to make sure people will actually click on it, with systems designed to identify the best performing ones. Surprisingly data-driven, no?

7. Even the parodies work

The Onion launched Clickhole.com in 2014 as a parody to the ever-increasing number of clickbait headlines appearing in our news feeds. “We strive to make sure that all of our content panders to and misleads our readers just enough to make it go viral,” Clickhole states, with top-rated headlines ranging from “6 cemetaries that are clearly competing for Will Smith’s grave” to “Putting the debate to bed: PETA has announced that they will never know whether it’s okay to be naked in front of your dog or what.” The best part is: these headlines work perfectly as clickbait themselves.

8. We keep coming back for more

We’ve all been disappointed by that article that claims to reveal the world’s best-kept weight loss secret, only to read that we should eat more eggs. So it makes sense that readers would get tired of this after a while, right? Well, Wired argues differently. We put up with disappointment – a lot of it, actually – because “the headline itself is what gave you pleasure— not for what it was, mind you, but for what it represented.” Basically, we’re drawn by the promise of the headline, not the content itself.

9. It doesn’t always pay

There was a pretty notable pushback against clickbait in 2014. Facebook introduced algorithms to reduce the number of clickbaity headlines flooding users’ news feeds. Plus, 615 million devices now use an ad blocker, reports PageFair. So getting all those pageviews got a whole lot harder to do, and became less profitable.

10. We’re afraid of dying.

Why are so many clickbait articles based on lists? Let’s ask an Italian novelist, literary critic, philosopher, semiotician, and university professor. “How,” asks Umberto Eco, “as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries.”

So there you have it. Clickbait – whatever it actually is – is a highly precise skill exercised by content curators who presumably spend all day looking for internet trends (and definitely not planning world domination) that feed into our emotions or curiosity and help us deal with the unknowable infinity of life.