I Got So Skinny Writing This Article About Clickbait Headlines and Now I Look Like a Model!

I’m sure you know the experience. You’ll be coming to the end of an online article and your eye will wander to a clickbait headline screaming, “Honey Boo Boo Is So Skinny Now and Looks Like a Model!”, “Precious Is So Skinny Now and Looks Like a Barbie” or “Remember the Girl From That One Movie? She Grew Up To Be the Most Beautiful Woman in the World.” 

Intellectually, you know that you should resist. You know that you’re being baited. You realize that these articles pander to our basest instincts, to our insatiable desire to gawk at beautiful people and our endless fascination with the weight loss transformations and the bizarre, inexplicable phenomenon whereby beautiful children often grow up to be beautiful adults and/or famously beautiful parents have unusually gorgeous offspring. Is it possible that there is connection between childhood beauty and adult beauty and/or attractive parents having attractive children? In violent defiance of all we know about biology, genetics and science, these important articles suggest a link might very well exist! 

You know damn well that the article never lives up to the headline. Much of the time the headline barely even has anything to do with the hot online garbage it’s pimping. Yet you let morbid curiosity and voyeurism get the best of you all the same despite knowing that you’re invariably going to end up feeling disappointed and misled, the way you do EVERY single time you make the all too human mistake of clicking. 

By “you” I of course mean “me.” 100 percent of the time the rational part of my brain impotently insists, “You’re NOT going to click on the headline “Mo’Nique Is So Skinny Now and Looks Like Beyonce” like a fucking cyber-sheep. Have some fucking self-respect, man. Don’t make it that easy for these cynical opportunists” but is overruled by the stupid, gullible, easily led part of my brain that instead insists, “That all might be true but what if Mo’Nique DID get so skinny that she now looks like Beyonce? I would like to see that!” 

By the time I click on the stupid clickbait headline its claims have been radically downsized. Instead of “Mo’Nique Lost So Much Weight That She Makes Beyonce Look, Frankly, Repulsive By Comparison” we’re treated to the blander, more sustainable if infinitely less interesting, “8 Impressive Weight Loss Transformations.” By the time I’ve clicked the seventh slide to see what Mo’Nique looks like post-weight loss the anger I once felt towards the clickbait proprietor has been re-directed towards myself. 

After all, clickbait wouldn’t be so goddamn effective if we could only be strong and smart and self-disciplined enough to resist it. It’s not enough to recognize clickbait as clickbait. That’s only the beginning. That’s the easy part. I know damn well I shouldn’t click. I click all the same. 

If these clickbait articles were honestly titled they wouldn’t have a fraction of the traffic. “Salma Hayek’s Daughter Is Attractive, As You Would Obviously Assume” is a way less juicy come-on than “Salma Hayek’s Daughter is THE Most Beautiful Woman on the Planet.” Only one is likely to get rubes like myself to click on page after page to determine for myself whether Hayek’s spawn is, in fact, objectively more physically attractive than than the 7 billion other people on the planet. 

“Honey Boo Boo Lost Some Weight And Looks Pretty Good” is similarly a non-starter of a clickbait headline. In order to properly bait the trap, an effective clickbait article must traffic in Trumpian superlatives. It’s not enough be good looking: you have to look like a model or a Barbie or be the most attractive person on the planet. In that respect, I don’t click on these links for confirmation that they’re true but rather to see just just how egregiously false and misleading they are. There must be some dumb part of my brain that genuinely likes exposing these carnival barkers of the online advertising world as the phonies and frauds that they obviously are. 

So I keep on clicking and feeling bad about myself in hopes that one magical day I’ll click on one of these articles and it will turn out that the kid from Two and a Half Men really DID grow up to be more handsome than Steve McQueen and that is something I DEFINITELY want, no NEED to see for myself. 

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