On the Structure of Clickbait
May 13, 2014
Ah, clickbait. It is a persistent irritant most of us failed to predict at the dawn of the Internet. If you have ever wondered about the construction of the alluring headlines, Michael Reid Roberts at the American Reader delves into the formula in “Life Sentences: the Grammar of Clickbait!” Roberts begins with the commonsense observation that “clickbait is ruining journalism.” Though he mentions cagey Buzzfeed in passing, he chooses for his primary example the good-intentioned but imminently annoying Upworthy.
Below is the article’s description of how to create an Upworthy-esque headline. Note that the last part of the following quote references the real Upworthy headline, “There’s a World War Happening Online Right Now. And You Might be a Mercenary in It.” Roberts writes:
“The key element in these titles is the relationship between the first sentence and the second. The first is relatively traditional, while the second sentence is short, annoyingly informal, and conspiratorial. We might call these couplets epodal because of the relative line lengths, but I think the effect is more similar to catalexis in that the second line’s brevity emphasizes something unfinished or incomplete. The second sentence is intentionally vague: click here to finish the thought, answer the question, solve the riddle! And, like most unfinished stories, the conclusion is rarely satisfying. But as someone who rarely clicks on Upworthy links, I have come to appreciate the beauty of these teases. Read the above titles again, but without registering the hyperlink: now they read like Buddhist koans. You want to know how you might be a war mercenary, but can you know, really? Bask in the not-knowing.”
The article is peppered with sample headlines, both ones straight from the site and ones Roberts made up using the formula he’s deduced. He delves into a couple phrases that recur frequently in Upworthy clickbait: “restore your faith in humanity” and “you won’t believe what happens next.” Sound familiar? See the article for more of Roberts’ analysis of this thoroughly modern phenomenon.
Cynthia Murrell, May 13, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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