"I scroll around, but when I look at the internet, I feel the same as when I’m walking through Coney Island. It’s like carnival barkers, and they all sit out there and go, 'Come on in here and see a three-legged man!' So you walk in and it’s a guy with a crutch."
The thing is, he was talking about BuzzFeed when he said that, and that is not what BuzzFeed does at all. BuzzFeed's editor wrote about the distinction here, and it's the most insightful article I've read on the topic:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/why-buzzfeed-doesnt-do-cli...
People tend to consider things like lists clickbait, even though those articles usually deliver exactly what the headline suggests. (If you click on "23 photos of kittens that are just too adorable," that is what you will get.) But because it's an article that was made specifically to get traffic, people incorrectly call it clickbait.
And it often goes even further than that. On Reddit and Hacker News, commenters constantly call articles clickbait. Sometimes it's true, and there's a sensational headline that leads to a bullshit story. But just as often, the story delivers on what the headline promises, but commenters call it clickbait because the headline is slightly hyperbolic, snappy, or just plain well-written.