At some point during the transition from muckrakers and print journalism to online journalism and blogs, clickbait rose from the ground up. Clickbait is Internet content that has the sole purpose of being eye-catching and attention-grabbing. It’s the online version of the tabloid. But unlike the tabloid (which was always condensed into its own publication that you could snag from the shelf), it’s everywhere.
I’ll admit, I’ve found myself reading certain articles, if they can even be called that, from time to time because the “headlines” used buzzwords that caught my eye. By the end of the piece, the only thing I’d accomplished was wasting five minutes of my life. And for what? A cute picture of a cat, maybe even a peaked curiosity for trivial facts I hadn’t known about celebrities. None of it was worthwhile. I couldn’t solidly grab onto something I’d learned and use it to passionately speak out. All it did was take up space.
That’s all clickbait continues to do in our society. Kim Kardashian’s newest outfit takes the light over activist causes. People care more about why a celebrity was kicked out of a party than they do about mass murders in the country. And now, we have the option of having it delivered right to our inbox.
BuzzFeed’s “Dude A Day” newsletter debuted in September 2015, but since I don’t actively peruse the site, I hadn’t seen it until now. It’s a disgrace to newsletters everywhere. Being a writer, I get biweekly newsletters sent to my inbox. They’re well-formatted, educational and have something substantial to offer. But “Dude A Day?” You get a picture of a “hot guy” sent to your inbox. That’s it.
But what about The Piedmont Park Hanging? I haven’t been able to find a lot of information on this and to be honest, that doesn’t surprise me. It isn’t in any major publications. No one’s actively talking about it. If one of my random Facebook friends hadn’t shared some information about it, I wouldn’t have even known it had happened. And while the police report says it’s suicide, Twitter users speculate it was a lynching. There aren’t many reputable sources to go off of, and each news site I’ve found says something different. But barely anyone knows it even happened. Whether the KKK was involved or not, it deserves publicity.
Then there’s Donald Trump Child Rape Case. How many of you actually knew about this? One of the few articles about it was published at the end of June and I saw it shared once before it completely disappeared and was forgotten. Presumptive Republican candidate Donald Trump was accused of raping a woman back in 1994 when she was 13 years old. Why didn’t this get more publicity? Maybe because he’s powerful, white and privileged.
When this came so shortly after the outrage about Brock Turner, it surprised me that more people weren’t disgusted—especially because of the way Trump views rape, his disgusting comments about his daughter and his misogynistic views of women. This is being completely ignored by mainstream media.
Meanwhile, posts trending on BuzzFeed talk about Instagram travel hacks and a baby beaver that can’t control its tail. I love a small animal as much as the next person, but there’s no real substance to a post like that. The only reason people click on it is because it’s got the words “baby beaver” in the title. BuzzFeed is primarily a clickbait site; the actual news that’s reported isn’t heavily advertised on the homepage and there was no trace of reporting on Donald Trump’s rape case.
Clickbait is primarily a distraction and a timewaster, a category of inane posts that do nothing to educate on the matters at hand. And because it’s published online, it’s easier to access than print tabloids. Online journalism has, in a way, become a joke. A connection has been established between clickbait and journalism because it’s essentially reporting, but it has more of a place on blogs than it does on a site with actual news.
When people get tired of seeing reports of rape and murder and hate crimes, they replace it with clickbait and move on—almost like a fad. And in a way, it provides some relief and an escape from what’s going on in the world. But it’s damaging. It pushes substantial articles under the rug and people are more inclined to search for cute cats than they are to educate themselves on current events and social movements. Less education leads to more ignorance and a society that has no idea what’s really going on outside the edges of their screens.
