Question: Why did you click on this title?
Is it that you think I’m an eternal fountain of knowledge, and you want to know how I did it? Or is it because you want to find out what is wrong with me to even consider writing such a phrase?
I don’t think it’s the former. If it is, here is my secret: I was already born with infinite knowledge, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
But I suspect it’s the latter.
Well. Basically, you got clickbaited.
No worries, we all have a weak spot for clickbaits.
I want to show you why it works so well, and that it’s something that, even if the name “clickbait” is new, we’ve actually been doing it for a long time. And you will see why I choose Nietzsche’s book as the title for this post, and why I believe it’s the best name for a philosophy book.
This last phrase was a hook, but we will see that later (look, another hook).
How they get you
So, first of all. How do clickbaits work?
Clickbait speaks to your emotions, they provoke a reaction. Any reaction will do really. It could be inspiration (“What made Daniel Craig go from Homeless to International Superstar”), anger (“Watch these teenagers bully the girl in the wheelchair”), fear (“Watch out for these 7 Signs you might be have Alzheimer”), surprise (“The Sky might not be Blue after all”), or disbelief (“Why I am so Wise”), just to name a few. It doesn’t matter if it’s a positive or a negative one. Any emotion will do, and the more extreme, the better it works.
This doesn’t mean every single clickbait title will work every single time on every single person. But getting an emotion out of the consumer goes a long way.
Another element that clickbait has is that it tickles our curiosity. Or it gives it a big hit. Clickbait creates an information-gap, which is basically the blank space between what we know (normal, useful, human information) and what we know that we don’t know, for example: “things Paris Hilton can’t sleep without: she must be the only one with the 3rd item on the list”. That is uncomfortable. That makes your brain go “I kind of want to know”.
The anticipation of getting that information makes us excited. It’s basically like knowing that you’re about to eat a pizza, drink a beer or have sex. Your brain knows what it wants, and pursues that. You might recognize this as the work of dopamine. You wouldn’t be far off, the issue is that it’s not clear how much, and when, dopamine affects with clickbaits.
What is clear is that you’re looking for the release of the tension that arises from not knowing. That’s why, even if you couldn’t care less on a rational level, your brain will feel some comfort knowing that Paris Hilton needs a $5 eye mask, a high-tech sleep ring, and reruns of “The Simple Life” to have an ideal night of sleep.
And it’s going to be at unease again when I tell you that the list I just gave you isn’t complete, that the 4th item is actually the very unusual one.
And if I tell you that the missing things are a Luis Vuitton notebook and a Chiji Pure Love Energy Candle, you will be at ease again.
I’m really debating if I should tell you that there’s one more thing that you probably won’t believe she cannot sleep without. But I won’t.
By the way, do you see that “probably” in the previous line? There’s now one more information gap in there (will I really not believe it?), making it more interesting. It’s a subtle trick that often works.
Of course, this works mainly on a subconscious level, and we usually don’t notice it. But it still drives our behavior, increasing the chance to click on it.
The best thing you can do to test it out, is to watch out the next time you see a headline you find curious. Give it 5 seconds before clicking, and then move on without looking at it. You will feel discomfort.
Then open it after 10 seconds, and you will see that you feel better.
Obviously, the closer the topic is to our interests, the higher the chances our brain develops curioisty for it.
But don’t think that because we would never consicously look at some topic, it cannot peak our interest significantly. You might not care about Swedish Rock bands or alcohol laws in the north of Greece, but if I tell you that there’s an article explaining how a Swedish Rock Band was able to lift a 40-year old ban on red wine in the northern region in Greece, you might be very tempted to click on it.
It’s really about how big the mistery is.
Before you go look for the story, the story is completely made up. But you get what I’m trying to say: anything can peak our interest if the gap is reasonably big.
In this case it would be: “really? but how is that possible? do I know of any similar scenario? how would they go around to do it? was it trough concerts? how did they go from Sweden to Greece?”. Questions, questions, questions. And your brain just wants answers. And once he gets it, he moves on from what 3 seconds ago was the most interesting topic in the world.
There are many things that make certain clickbaits work better than others. For example, the aforementioned hook, which is a literary device used to pique the reader’s interest and encourages him to continue reading. By providing a preview of an intriguing topic or curiosity that will be discussed later, you entice the reader to stay engaged and discover more.
So, it’s not the greatest topic I will admit, but even something as banal as discussing why you think a specific title is the best ever for a philosophy book can be enough to engage someone.
What also works is the use of lists and odd numbers, which are somehow attractive to us, and gets our attention.
It probably has to do with the list responding to our tendency to categorize things, and odd numbers giving credibility (if it’s a list of 10 things, you might think some were added to even the list out – odd numbers looks like “that’s what we have, take it or leave it”). Whatever the reasons, they work.
That’s why you’re not often seeing articles with the title “what makes Albania a great tourist destination”, but “13 hidden vacation spots in Albania”.
You could also take out “Albania” and write “this cheap and secret paradise” instead, in order to create another …. exactly; knowledge-gap.
Look at you, learning new words.
Anyway, the list of things that make clickbait effective is long, and probably an odd number.
The important things to remember is the emotion aspect, and the fact that our brain wants to find out what he doesn’t know.
How did we get here?
Alright, so now we have a grasp on why clickbaits work. But why did I say that it’s not new?
Because it isn’t. Stupid question. Actually, it was a rhetorical question, but we’ll look at those some other day.
We have done one form or another of clickbait for centuries now.
The 1st of January 1833, in the United States of Attention, Morning Post comes out with his first edition. It’s the beginning of the Penny Press. Penny Press gets the name because it costs one cent, compared to the 5 cents that traditional newspapers cost at the time. It paved the way for Yellow Journalism.
The new model made the news more accessible to the masses, and way more attractive.
Accessible because it was way cheaper. A lot cheaper.
Attractive because the Penny Press would cover mainly crime, tragedy, adventure, and gossip. And who doesn’t love a good gossip? The official account is that the working class was very keen on it, but I can imagine a big chunk of upper society also indulging in it, to be honest. In any case, people loved the new topics, and the simplicity of it.
Were the titles sensionalistic? Yes.
Did they touch a nerve? Definetly.
Did they spark curiosity? Absolutely.
Was there fact-checking? No.
Did we care about the fact-checking? Obviously not.
Did we care about the rest? A lot.
Benjamin Day jumped on the train of Yellow Journalism, and changed the way we consume news forever by creating The Sun, which would become the biggest and most successful Penny Press.
The Sun was also the first ones to hire Newspaper hawkers, the boys shouting the headlines we know from movies. You know how your newsoutlet tells you that “Amber Heart says Unbelievable thing to Jonny Depp in Court” or “Scientist find Indication of Life on the Moon” on your way to work? Well, The Sun was the same but with boys shouting this to you on the street, and instead of clicking your way through 10 different adds, you just had to pay 1 penny.
Actually, the example of scientists discovering life on the moon was a real story printed by the Sun. It’s known as the Great Moon Hoax, and it came out in a series of 6 articles claiming that there were bison, bat and goatlike humanoid on the moon, among others. The Vespertillo-homo was probably the first batman we believed in since the Greek came up with the story of Minyades.
But the real revelation for the industry came when they realized that they could monetize the attention they were getting even more by selling spaces to put adds up.
Bling Bling, Motherfucker.
As you can imagine, once we found out how to get each other’s attention, and that we can monetize that, it became all about who can do it for the longest. It’s the birth of the current Attention Economy.
Nietzsche was also clickbaiting
So, what about Nietzsche? Do I think Nietzsche knew he was clickbaiting when he named his book “Why I Am so Wise”?
No, he was just being cocky. Wouldn’t be the first time.
But he still managed to create both an emotion in the reader (indignation, surprise, admiration, or whatever you might feel) and the curiosity to read what he was on about (tell me Friedrich, why are you so wise?).
And it works, it’s a very provocative title, but i makes you want to read it.
It’s also a very cool name for a philosophers’ autobiography; you want a philosopher to know a lot and have authority whilst he is busy doubting everything. What better way to express that in 5 words?
Once you have the perfect clickbait, the question is how well you follow up on it.
Your brain might be interested in knowing why Nietszche thinks he is so wise, but reading 128 pages written by him talking about how he despises his mother and sister may not be worth the effort.
A huffpost article about the ex of some Hollywood star, or a youtube video of some Chinese CCTV-camera which you won’t believe what happens next in, on the other hand, are probably way easier to follow up on.
But that goes into the terrain of maintaining attention and fullfilling expectations, which is a different topic. And something Nietzsche is definetly not the best example of.
So what?
By now, you have probably gathered that I’m not the biggest fan of clickbaits, and what it brought with it.
Our attention is one of the most valuable things we get as an individual, together with time and energy, and having powerful forces around us trying to steal it constantly is not the best thing for us, both as individuals and as a society.
If we’re not in control of our attention, we’re reacting instead of acting. And we’re not even aware of it.
But I can also see how there are times when clickbait can be positive, mainly if the clickbait actually gives valuable information. If you can get nudged into the right direction, that’s probably good. But who is to decide what is valuable information? What principles should govern the decision?
Of course, individual responsibility of the creator comes to play here. But the argument is problematic:
First, I don’t think that most people actually enjoy having to create catchy, misleading and overpromising titles. Some might, occasionally, do so (I must confess, I have really enoyed naming this post like I did, I’ve been smikring for some time now). But in general, everyone has some idea of what is a creative title and what is pure clickbait.
If you have the drive to inform people, you want the quality of your work to speak for you, not your capacity to grab the attention in 1 short line. But it has become a necessary evil for most nowadays, and those that are able to get attention with quality of work alone are few. So, if everyone else is doing it…
Second, the debate of what is useful or not is very open. What do we value as a society?
I think we could probably arrive to some consensus about certain type of contents that should be diminished, and diminshed a lot. Gossip is one of them. But there’s always going to be a very blurry line about what some consider valuable, and what they don’t.
Individual responsibility of the creator is not something we should rely on. It’s the individual responsibility of the consumer that is necessary.
Clickbait is always difficult to resist, but having a clear idea of what you want to spend your attention on, and what you don’t, makes it a lot easier.
Don’t let other people decide for you what’s important to you.
It’s not easy to know what you want, and if you let other forces decide it for you, specially if their only interest is to get your attention, you’re setting yourself up to for misery.
“It isn’t normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement.”
Abraham Maslow
My tip is this: observe your tendencies, reflect on what matters to you, and act accordingly.
Block everything that is not essential to you, or at least limit it. There’s enough pluggins for browsers and ways to configure your phone to limit how much time you can spend on what you don’t want to spend time on.
When it comes to random inputs, less is more.
Act consciously.
In the meantime, I’ll try to get the skin cream Paris Hilton uses at night.
leo burghaus 
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