The New, Annoyingly Enigmatic Clickbait
I have a deeply ambivalent, love-hate relationship with a lot of pop culture, but I have a hate-hate relationship with clickbait, that awful everyday irritation that makes all of our lives slightly worse.
I do, however, love to make fun of clickbait. Parodies of clickbait have been a part of this site from the beginning. Writing these satires is cathartic, and, in a weird development, these silly pieces tend to be the most popular.
People still regularly read the clickbait parody I did ages ago, written from the perspective of someone who murdered Cary Elwes because he thought he was hitting on his girlfriend and then buried the Princess Bride star in an unmarked grave.
I sometimes get angry emails from people understandaby confused by the article. They often accuse me of being jealous of Elwes, which I find strange.
If you Google “Cary Elwes,” that piece is one of the first to appear. That means that when people look up Elwes, a popular and prolific actor, one of the first things they see is a bizarre piece from a writer they’ve never heard of and a website they’re unfamiliar with alluding to Elwes being murdered by the writer of the article.
I also like writing comedy. Clickbait parodies give me an opportunity to exercise that skill set.
I live online, unfortunately. That’s a terrible place to reside. It’s full of creeps, scumbags and opportunists. Unfortunately, the internet is my professional home.
Clickbait evolves and adapts. It’s simultaneously tricky and stupid. That describes a new development in clickbait, or at least an obnoxious trend I’m only picking up on now.
I’m not sure when it began, but I’ve noticed that a number of pop culture websites run headlines for articles about movies that describe the film in vague terms without actually naming the film being referenced.
To cite a recent example, a few days back, I scrolled past a Screenrant article entitled “After 51 Movies, Mark Wahlberg Still Hasn’t Paid Off His $20 Million Villain Role From 28 Years Ago.”
If the headline had been “After 51 Movies, Mark Wahlberg Still Hasn’t Paid Off His Villainous Role in Fear,” I would have skipped it completely. But because of the way that the headline was phrased, I felt like I had to click on it to see which movie they were referring to.
Instead of straightforwardly conveying information, this annoyingly effective form of clickbait makes readers guess. It’s like a miniature pop quiz or crossword puzzle answer in the form of a headline for annoying clickbait.
The headline suggests that Wahlberg received twenty million dollars for his villainous role in Fear. That would have made the relative newcomer one of the best-paid actors in the world.
Instead, the 20 million dollars refers to the film’s domestic gross.
I know that I should not fall for these headlines, but my dumb ego insists that I play along. I even feel a surge of pride for guessing that the twenty-million-dollar movie with Wahlberg in a villainous role is Fear.
I should use this technique myself. For example, the big piece that will run tomorrow is about Uncle Sam. The headline is “Larry Cohen and William Lustig's 1996 Dark Comedy Uncle Sam is Not the Timeless Masterpiece it Promises to Be.”
It’s safe to assume that you are not going to read the article. Uncle Sam is an obscure movie even exploitation movie fiends are probably unfamiliar with.
So it would probably make more sense to give it a cryptic headline like, “This Insanely Timely and Relevant 1996 Dark Satire From the Prescient Creator of It’s Alive and Q – The Winged Serpent is a Massive Letdown.”
That still isn’t a particularly sexy headline, but at least it’ll inspire people to click on the piece to see whether or not they know the movie being referenced.
This form of clickbait is incredibly irritating but also maddeningly effective, so don’t expect it to disappear anytime soon.
Nathan needs teeth that work, and his dental plan doesn't cover them, so he started a GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants. Give if you can!
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