From an ethical point of view, have you considered your “attention grabbing tool” evil ?
We really need our attention to ourselves, please stop groping it.
Yours looks particularly evil.
We really need our attention to ourselves, please stop groping it.
Yours looks particularly evil.
No one is is arguing subtitles are bad, it's the way this tries to increase engagement through abusing attention mechanisms, that I also agree with OP is likely damaging to us.
It's part of the many reasons I dislike the current short form media craze - horrible tactics like this are used more often than not.