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Comment by djrockstar1 | Hacker News Reader

Thing is, clickbait works, so people will continue doing it. All your "gotcha" showed was that it works. Look at all the people in this thread engaging with this post, not because of its content but because of its title. If a clickbait title will lead to higher engagement, why would an author not use it?

The best way to combat clickbait is to not fall for it, not play into it, to either ignore the article, or to read the article and discuss or critique the content instead of bringing more attention(all press is good press) to the title.

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> Look at all the people in this thread engaging with this post, not because of its content but because of its title.

All I see is a discussion that’s been massively derailed by a shitty title. If it had a sensible title, perhaps people would be talking about the actual concept that the article was trying to tackle instead of threads like this where people keep having to explain that the title doesn’t match the article.

“Engagement” for the sake of engagement is worthless unless you are optimising for noise instead of signal.

My gotcha and the negative reaction to it shows only that the majority of readers are ok w/ using of clickbait titles. That's a pity. Although bringing attention to such things always gets negative reaction in the beginning. Not the reason to stay silent anyway.

> If a clickbait title will lead to higher engagement, why would an author not use it?

Out of intellectual/professional honesty e.g.?

The negative reactions to your post are due to the laziness of not reading the article and the "gotcha".

I think most of us come to Hacker News for interesting discussions, and the torrent of confidently incorrect "this person is wrong" comments is not adding anything to any discussion.

The top comment is already clarifying the title, so any other comment should be unnecessary, especially snarky ones.

The gotcha is another problem in itself: not only it comes from a misunderstanding of the post, a lot of people don't have control over their publishing software, but their advice should be judged on its own merits, not on some "you criticise society yet you participate in it" way [1].

[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...

Funny and arrogant attempt to mask the problem with clickbait-ish title by turning into personal accusations in laziness, referring to memes, speaking for the rest of community, etc. The whole bag of tricks. Not gonna work, sorry. The title is wrong. Go blame the author, not the one calling out the bullshit.

The current title wasn't added by the author, it was editorialized by another person. This is also against the rules, and will probably be changed as soon as dang sees it. The original title might be cheeky, but it makes sense in the context of the post.

By the way, you broke another guideline in your comment: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

Anyway, I'm just explaining why other people flagged you. You can choose to try to understand the rationale for your flag/downvotes. Or you can cover your ears and accuse everyone else of being pro-clickbait.

Here we ago again, first it was my laziness, now the luck or real understanding :) If we are on the grounds of telling other people what their choices are (another arrogant and surprising manipulation, but whatever) you have a choice to engage into fixing the wrong message. Or you can continue posting comments directly to unknown individuals trying to enlighten them on reasons how their behavior triggers you.

> you have a choice to engage into fixing the wrong message

I'm not the OP nor dang, so I can't fix it. About talking about it, I already mentioned that this had been done done, on my first comment: The top comment is already clarifying the title. Several people also replied to you.

That comment was made an hour before you made yours. Also the article itself contextualizes the title, and that would have cleared up your misunderstanding.

> Or you can continue posting comments directly to unknown individuals trying to enlighten them on reasons how their behavior triggers you.

Nothing is triggering me. You clearly seem bothered by the flagging from your edits, so I'm trying to explain to you how this community works. I'm sorry that my explanation doesn't satisfy you, but continuously attacking me won't change anything and won't do any good.

Please don't turn this into a flame war. I'm just trying to engage with you to help you understand. Please don't assume ill intent.

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