…and what happened next will leave you speechless!!!
(relax, nothing in this article will render you speechless).
But you DID click on it.
I did, of course, have myriad alternative ‘headlines’ to consider for this post.
Something along the lines of:
‘Writers Hate This One Simple Trick…’
Or perhaps:
‘You Won’t Believe What This Blogger Says About Clickbait…’
After all, if the internet has taught us anything, it’s that nothing attracts attention quite like a headline that promises the emotional intensity of a Shakespeare tragedy and delivers the informational value of a damp biscuit.
In fact, statistically speaking, this article about clickbait would probably receive far more clicks if it actually was clickbait.
But there’s a small problem.
I can’t stand the stuff.
Clickbait is the digital equivalent of someone grabbing your sleeve in the street and saying, ‘You simply must hear this…’- only for you to discover that what follows is neither surprising, nor important, nor particularly interesting.
And yet it has become one of the internet’s favourite tricks.
You will know the sort of thing.
‘This Man Looked In His Garden Shed — What He Found Will Leave You Speechless’.
‘Doctors Don’t Want You To Know About This One Fruit’.
‘She Put Vinegar In Her Washing Machine-The Result Is Incredible’.
Now, let’s pause for a moment.
If a man looks in his garden shed, what might he realistically find?
A lawn mower. A spider. Possibly a forgotten bag of compost.
Hardly the stuff of national astonishment.
And yet these headlines are crafted with almost scientific precision. They exploit something very simple in the human brain: curiosity. The headline deliberately withholds the key information, leaving a tiny unanswered question hanging in the air.
What did he find?
Why are the doctors upset?
What happened with the vinegar?
We click not because the story matters, but because our brains want closure.
In that sense, clickbait isn’t really journalism or storytelling at all. It’s a psychological nudge.
Or perhaps more accurately, a prod with a digital stick.
There are, in fact, a few reliable tricks that clickbait headlines nearly always use.
The first is withholding information, telling you that something astonishing happened but refusing to say what it was.
The second is emotional exaggeration-everything is ‘shocking’, ‘unbelievable’, ‘incredible’ or ‘astonishing’, even when it clearly isn’t.
And the third is manufactured urgency, the suggestion that this is something you absolutely must see immediately, before the opportunity somehow disappears.
It’s a formula.
And like most formulas, once you see it, you can’t really unsee it.
Of course, none of this happens by accident. Clickbait is not aimed at readers in the traditional sense, people who seek information or thoughtful writing.
It is aimed at traffic.
Advertising revenue, algorithms, impressions, engagement statistics.
The more people who click, the more money a site can make, regardless of whether the content is useful, informative, or memorable.
In fact, the content itself is often almost irrelevant.
And the demographic most frequently targeted tends to be those who browse quickly and casually (ie) people scrolling through social media during a spare five minutes, or while waiting for the kettle to boil, or while pretending to listen to someone in a meeting.
The headline must grab attention instantly, because the reader’s attention span at that moment may only be a few seconds long.
Clickbait doesn’t ask you to think.
It asks you to react.
The problem is that while clickbait may succeed in the short term, it quietly erodes something far more valuable over time.
Trust.
Readers quickly realise they have been slightly misled. The promised ‘shocking discovery’ turns out to be mildly interesting at best. The ‘incredible secret’ is something their grandmother has been doing since 1954.
After a while, the spell breaks.
A headline becomes something to be suspicious of rather than something to be interested in.
For writers, journalists, and publishers who genuinely care about their craft, that should be worrying.
Because writing is built on a relationship between writer and reader. And like any relationship, it relies on a basic level of honesty.
A headline should invite someone into a story, not trick them into it.
Perhaps that is why I chose not to write this blog with a clickbait headline after all.
Yes, it might have gained a few more clicks.
But good writing should never need to shout, exaggerate, or wave its arms wildly in the air just to get noticed.
Sometimes the best way to earn a reader’s attention is simply to respect their intelligence.
So no miracle cures, no astonishing secrets, no unbelievable discoveries hiding in my garden shed.
Just a blog about clickbait.
Which, in its own quiet way, may be the most honest headline you’ll read all day.
