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> most disconcerting of all is to see everyday people start to adopt it.

"User posts interesting observation on website. The last paragraph implies a terrifying view into the future."

I think (hope? fear?) that it is mostly imitation. We start learning language by imitation and we never really stop. Will the clickbait we learn today go away again our stay with us?

Pre-radio newspaper headlines are notorious for their crazy front page headlines. It would be interesting to analyze everyday writing from that time for traces of the front page style. If present, did those patterns go away again or did they shape language as we use it today?

Another problem is how do you decide that something is clickbait without clicking it? Agreed that most of the catchy headlines are actually clickbaits, but there could be always some that are genuine.

Think of clickbaits as a marketing tactic. On the way to your workplace, you see hundreds of those salesmen trying to sell you something by telling tall tales. Your impression would be like, "Hey, not these stupid fellas again. Next time one comes near me, I'll start a war on them!".

However, if you think about it, a substantial portion of those salesmen (at least 20-30%) are genuine people who are just earning their livelihoods. You know that even after accounting for some of their exaggerations, their products are sometimes actually useful to you!

> how do you decide that something is clickbait without clicking it?

It's easy. The headline should tell the whole story:

    "Acme Widget stock down 2.5%"
    "CERN sientists discover Higgs Boson"
    "Smith and Jones tied in polls"

There is no mystery ("Acme Widget stock makes startling change"). While there's not much room for detail, still: 1) I know what the article is about, 2) I know whether I would be interested in the rest, and 3) I can get a summary of the day's happenings just by skimming the headlines. This was the original purpose of headlines and one of the main reasons for the article itself following a structure called the Inverted Pyramid. The headline told the whole story, just in outline. The first sentence of the article told the whole story again, just with a little more detail. The first paragraph covered the whole story again, in yet more detail. Want more details? Keep reading paragraphs. You can stop at any time. Your only loss is some detail. Compare that to the circuitous, long-winded introductions of many blogs, where the writer finally gets to the point about two thirds through.

Clickbait deliberately withholds information, instead of giving all it can in the room that it has. Clickbait churns up questions, headlines give answers. Clickbait lures you into a story that, in the end, was not interesting to you. Headlines help you know whether the story will be interesting to you or not.

News stories are different from editorial, opinion, informational, entertainment, etc. articles. For example, the top article on Google News for me right now is a NYT editorial: "The Jobs Report Is Not Quite as Terrible as It Looks." If I saw that on old-fashioned newsprint while skimming down the page, I would definitely stop and read it. I also clicked the article to read the story on GN.

Is it clickbait? How would you retitle this article? http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/04/upshot/the-jobs-report-is-...

  > How would you retitle this article?

I don't think the headline is clickbait: "The Jobs Report Is Not Quite as Terrible as It Looks." It's vague, yes, but it would be hard to cram much more into the headline.

If you read the article, the reasons he gives for "why the jobs report is not quite as terrible as it looks" is a hodgepodge of unrelated things: (a) the report's margin of error is 100,000; (b) a three-month average is better; (c) a wave of people are retiring; and (d) "as the economy approaches full employment, jobs growth must slow."

It's hard to summarize it better than: "The Jobs Report Is Not Quite as Terrible as It Looks Because . . . It's Complicated" (haha) or maybe "The Jobs Report Is Down From Last Time But As Expected for a Mature Economy." More descriptive, but kind of a clunker. I didn't say writing tight headlines was easy.

Either way, I am not irritated at all by the original headline, because it gives me an accurate indication of whether I would read the rest of the article. In my case, I wouldn't. I look at the economy like the weather: complex, hard to predict, and of little effect on me unless it's really bad.

  > News stories are different from editorial, opinion,
  > informational, entertainment, etc. articles.

I agree. Sometimes you're in the mood for a rambling essay. Some things are complicated or indeterminate and cannot be easily summed up.

> Agreed that most of the catchy headlines are actually clickbaits, but there could be always some that are genuine.

Can you think of an example? Make one up, I don't mean scour the internet for one. I thought about what you said and I can't think of an instance where the crappy clickbait headlines we're used to seeing would actually be a well-descriptive headline for its content.

Like, I can't think of an instance where something like "I bought this camera, and you won't believe what happened!" [or other clickbait formats] is a reasonable descriptor for its content, where you just can't write title without titling it like that.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you?

> Maybe I'm misunderstanding you?

Perhaps he's suggesting that otherwise honest people have to resort to clickbait tactics to compete with the worsening signal-to-noise ratio

> otherwise honest people have to resort to clickbait tactics to compete with the worsening signal-to-noise ratio

Exactly. Imagine that you are a pristine expert in your subject and want to share your knowledge. Now, you want to write a well-researched article and post it on your blog, think what title will you give it?

If its a plain old title like "Acme stock is down by 5%", that won't be doing justice to your well-researched article. Maybe, you have got insights about technical/fundamental analyses about Acme stock that the rest of the professionals don't? Unless you give it a catchy title like "10 reasons to avoid Acme stock" or "Unpredictable mess lie ahead of Acme", no one is going to read your article (although it deserves to be read by millions).

tldr; Even a good product needs marketing sometimes.

> I will click the one whose headline is most like what a headline should be: an actual summary of the story.

I think you might be stating your opinion as fact. Clearly there are a lot of people in web publishing who disagree. Also, we're talking about link titles not headlines.

I'm not in web publishing but still I'd argue that the whole point of a link title is to get you to click on it. Just like the whole point of the design on your cereal box is to get you to buy that one instead of some other box. One link title can be measurably better than another by counting how many clicks each one gets.

Have you no standard for right and wrong other than "whatever is in one's own interest"?

Sorry, I honestly don't see how the wording of a link title is a moral issue.

How about if the title is trying to deceive me about the contents? Is lying a moral issue?

How about if the title is manipulating me to try to get me to click on it in order to make money from me doing so, even though it's going to waste my time? Is that a moral issue?

One example - while browsing, people read many more headlines than actual articles. If you follow a popular strategy of overemphasized or misleading headlines, you're essentially lying to people on mass scale.

This is a real problem, because people end up remembering (and believing) the bullshit they read in a headline, without ever realizing that the actual article debunked that statement.

A couple of opinions (while we're tossing opinions around):

I think we're still conflating link titles and headlines--they serve different functions. Link titles exist to get you to click through to the article. I'd argue that they should not have misleading information in it, but they should be enticing, and specifically, they should NOT summarize the contents of the article (otherwise why would anyone even click through?) Headlines are the first thing you see when you do click through to an article, and should nicely summarize the article so you don't have to stay long on the page to get the gist of what it's about.

Totally agree with you on not putting bullshit in a headline! As a reader I want a summary of the article so I don't need to stay long.

> we're still conflating link titles and headlines

They're the same thing everywhere I go: Google News, Hacker News, newspaper websites, articles reposted on Facebook . . . Where are you going that they're different?

> they should NOT summarize the contents of the article (otherwise why would anyone even click through?)

For the details. If an article is interesting to me, I will click it. Won't you?

- Arch Linux adopts systemd - More and more developers trying out Rust - Useful shell one-liners

I would click each of these. They're a little vague, but I made them up in a hurry. Still, I my clickbait radar would not have gone off on any of them.

There are three kinds of stories: 1) the kind I want to read in depth (like on programming or photography), 2) the kind I want to know usually just the gist (like the economy, politics, world news), and 3) the kind I don't even care to know the gist about (like some celebrity gossip, a diet fad that the writer already knows is ineffectual, etc.)

I just want the headline to convey whether, after I read the whole article, I will think it was worth it. The problem with clickbait is that it arouses your curiosity for everything, but at the end you feel the same way you feel after eating candy.

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