By now, you’re probably already familiar with the CLICKBAIT website offshoot of popular Fake News site THE ONION, called CLICKHOLE.
Clickhole is trying to do for clickbait news articles and websites (think Huffington Post) what The Onion did for, well, old-school news writing. Anything that could be said in a clickable headline to generate a clickthrough is what Clickhole is aiming for.
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But can you apply CLICKBAIT RULES IN REAL LIFE?
SURE you can. And it’s easy.
Take a look at CLICKBAIT DISSERTATIONS for just one example of how this can be done. This site takes a legitimate doctoral thesis and converts the title into an interesting clickable headline.
Take some of these example. You tell us which headline is more likely to get you clicking:
- These women needed to get their message across. How they did amazed me. (Hint: It may have involved quilts).
- Female Fabrications: An Examination of the Public and Private Aspects of Nüshu
or
- You NEED to see this hot model (NSFW) of ethnic politics and foreign policy.
- Supporting secession or maintaining boundaries: The international consequences of ethnic politics
or
- Would Your Diet Help Conquer Europe? These 100-year-old secrets to healthy eating will turn your stomach!
- The Politics of the Table: Nutrition and the Telescopic Body in Saxon Germany, 1890-1935
Yeah, the clickbait versions may be just a little bit misleading, but isn’t that what clickbait is all about? Who cares how it got you to read these PhD papers – at least you thought they’d be interesting!
So try this at your next family function: you know that story you’re going to tell about Little Jimmy’s day at school? Try prefacing it with an astonishing preface and see if people are more interested in what you have to say than they are normally.