What happens on this episode of TechWiki will absolutely shock you. Well, maybe
not. And don't worry, we haven't sold the channel to Buzzfeed. Today's episode
is all about clickbait, a certain style of content and headline writing that's
geared towards trying to get people to click on something as much as possible,
often at the expense of quality information. But what makes clickbait
clickbay anyways? The answer lies in our own psychological tendencies. As
different as people are, there are certain things that the brain generally
just really likes. Information presented in an ordered list, for example, is
especially appealing, which is why you always see the slideshows of the 17 most
important One Direction moments or whatever. These work because they spread
information in a structured way and also present themselves with a degree of
authority. A list with a precise number of elements seems more certain and has
more finality than a general headline. It's very appealing to our brains, which
want to cut through the crap and understand things quickly. Very ironic
considering the lists themselves are often completely freaking useless. And
even for click- baity headlines that don't direct you to a numbered list, the
use of authoritative sounding words such as science, the best, or destroyed is
common in order to appeal to that same desire for certainty in our lives. Which
also explains why many articles that try to promote half-baked things like
political opinions claim that a certain argument destroys the other one. Other
clickbait headlines flip the script of how journalism was usually done in the
past by merely teasing at what the content has inside. Instead of dog bites
man, you see this man confronted a dog
and you won't believe what happened next. This encourages the user to click
through instead of giving away the articles meat right in the headline.
This kind of direct appeal to our natural curiosity results in the reward
center of our brain lighting up when you find out what the answer to the
click-baity question or tease in the headline was. Even if the content inside
turns out to be totally stupid. This has often been referred to as the curiosity
gap, which is a key part of how the website Upworthy operates. Upworthy's
tendency to only place hints as to the actual content in their titles has led
their articles to being some of the most shared content on all of Facebook. And
of course, clickbait has gone beyond legitimate sites, well, as legitimate as
they can be, to being used in ads designed to look like real articles.
Although quite a few techsavvy users have developed an eye for what's
legitimate content and what's advertising or just use an ad blocker or
something, the enticing headlines still draw a lot of people and have for a long
time. Indeed, the arguable ancestors of modern clickbait are the vapid but
eye-catching headlines of yestery year. From the yellow journalism in New York
City that preceded the Spanishamean War in the late 1800s to grocery store
tabloids claiming that the royal family is actually from Mars. With this sort of
sensationalism playing to some pretty fundamental aspects of human nature, I
wouldn't expect clickbait to go away anytime soon. But don't worry, I promise
you that you'll never see a TechWiki episode titled The 22 Cutest CPUs you'll
see all day. With a linda.com membership, you can watch and learn from
top experts who are passionate about teaching and their field. These top
experts have thousands of videos for ondemand courses that you can learn on
your own schedule and your own pace. You can browse each course transcript to
follow along and search for an answer or skip to that point of the video, which I
actually like a lot personally. Taking notes as you go is easy, and you can
refer to them later on. You can even download tutorials and watch them on the
go, including access on your iOS or Android device. Create and save
playlists of courses that you want to watch to customize your learning path or
share with friends or colleagues or even team members. So whether you're looking
to become an industry expert, you're passionate about just some random hobby,
or you want to learn something new, head over to linda.com/techquicky and sign up for
your free 10-day trial. Thanks for watching, guys. Like it if you liked it, disliked if you disliked it. Don't
forget to get subscribed, and let us know in the comments down below if
there's some like psychology of something style episode that you'd like
us to check out in the future. Don't forget to click on this video, which
hopefully has a clickbaity title so you actually do it and has something to do
with it's super fun or something. Have fun over there. You're you're super
interested in what may or may not have happened. You'll never guess. Yeah.