We all love clickbait. Whether it's "You Won't Believe What Stupid Thing They Found in Their House," or "You'll Want to See More About This Giant Collection of Oven Mitts," or my personal favorite still, "Click Here to Learn Very Short, Semi-Funny, Kind of Stupid Snippets of Other People's Lives."
When I type It out like that it makes clickbait sound dumb, doesn't it? That's because it is dumb.
Now, clickbait actually is good for one thing. Finding all the sales prices at all your favorite stores where you like to shop online. Since, stay with me here: That's the whole point. They say televised advertising doesn't work. That may be true, but it doesn't matter when everyone cancels cable and switches to Netflix on their laptop. Why? Because you go to the advertising.
It's like the lamb walking into the wolf's mouth and saying, "Feed me." Clickbait is like journalism's shitty cousin. Which, I guess makes me the author of journalism's shitty cousin occasionally.
I'm not saying the stories you can find on a clickbait article you see on Facebook won't even amuse or hold your attention for a moment, I'm just saying that they're a waste of time. You know why else you shouldn't look at clickbait? I don't have a reason, but I'm sure you can find one for yourself.
The only thing we love more than clickbait is shitty journalism. You know how you can find shitty journalism? It tells you exactly what you want to hear. It's like the wolf telling the sheep he won't eat him after the sheep has already jumped in his mouth as he iis voraciously tearing into him.
There's been a great deal of controversy lately over "fake journalism," and though it's important to tell the difference between opinionated journalism and plain fake journalism for advertising, it's also important to be wary.
Then there's opinion pieces. Look, everyone likes having their ego polished, but if all you post is opinion pieces, you're probably not all that concerned with politics, or any other issue really, and are more interested with having people agree with you. You know what they say about opinions.
Just because they happen to be in a newspaper doesn't actually mean they're somehow better than the average person's views. Granted, they're generally written well, but they're not factually based on an incident, rather they are emotionally and opinion driven. It's important to be able to tell the difference when you read the news.
Check out my cool article next time: "You Won't Believe These 50 Left-handed Monkeys Who Wear 50 Different Types of Hats."
