Clickbait
THE MOST SHOCKING ARTICLE IN UNCYCLOPEDIA!!!
“So how do you suppose should I get more views?”
Clickbait is an Internet dirty trick consisting of creating shocking titles and pictures to attract idiots like you to all types of Internet junk. Most of them promise things like boobs, blasphemies, political and celebrity scandals, political subversion and incorrectness and ultraviolence. But in recent times we could have seen other variants specially in YouTube. Like arrows and circles in the previews, and also those ads claiming to offer free cars and smartphones but they really infected your devices with more viruses than the flu season.
Origin[edit]
The clickbait history begun when a smart dude had the brilliant idea to replace the scam concept with something more subtle called sensationalism. Then an evil advertiser thought that could be a good idea to move the concept to advertising, so could be possible to sell a piece of junk pretending that is a miraculous machine, a bunch of useless pills pretending to be vitamins or miraculous herbs, a stupid and boring TV show disguised as the century's event, or an awful movie with prominent boobs and butts in the poster or the videotape cover.
Then clickbait went to a new level with the arrival of Internet with lots of ads of free porn, and "Click here and earn a million of dollars in just one minute. Even some heartless people took advantage of the naivety (or perversion) of web surfers to direct them to a Goa Tse or even worse, a Rickroll. Besides, lots of clickbait ads infected the devices with tons of viruses. But honoring the truth you deserved that punishment if you really believed that you could earn a new iPhone or a car just by being the #1000 visitor.
And with YouTube clickbait reached the highest level of evil ever achieved. So we present the most common types of clickbait in YouTube and Internet.
Types of clickbait[edit]
Arrows and circles[edit]
Is about taking any picture not caring if it belongs to the video, firing up Paint and filling it with lots of arrows and circles highlighting anything, not caring if it is relevant or not. Usual examples are the ear of a guy at the bottom of the picture and a trash bag at the end of the street.
To make it even more dramatic they can also add a surprise or fear emoji and some uppercase letters with the first silliness they can think of. Then they add a sensationalist title and the perfect clickbait is done.
"I'm doing something and this happens"[edit]
Is common with those trending and famous nowadays YouTubers. Is about causing suspense in their audience hiding everything in the title and writing sillinesses like "I BUY AN iPHONE WITH YOUR MONEY AND THIS HAPPENS!!!". To make things worse, the can mix this with arrows and circles or exaggerated grimaces more appropriate for sex dolls. At the end of the day the result in the video is just something ridiculous and unimportant. But nobody cares since their target audience is mainly stupid teenagers and pre-teens and they enjoy liking and sharing such high quality content.
Eroticism[edit]
Is clear that sex is one of the most important and desired things in human life. So YouTube vultures took advantage of the prevailing lust in pre-teen and teenager boys. The most common example is finding a hot girl wearing a swimsuit or a thong in the preview just to discover that is a video of a Counter-Strike gameplay.
Other type is the "Hot WhatsApp chats". Is about acted WhatsApp chats pretending to be real, usually acted by the author and an accomplice (or the same author with another smartphone), ending with a photo of a girl wearing a swimsuit. Seems like their audience is stupid enough to ignore that they could use any search engine to find real porn elsewhere. Besides having a lower quality than a prehistoric videotape, is interrupted every now and then with Call of Duty gameplays.
Sex subliminal messages[edit]
The authors of those videos seems to have many of the sex complexes explained by Sigmund Freud, paranoid schizophrenia or all of them, since they see penises, vaginas, subliminal messages to incite to do evil things or support a political agenda, secret societies (like Illuminati) references, and more sillinesses like these in children's movies and TV shows. They can fill the previews with markers and other junk we saw before pointing to supposedly sex, satanic or propaganda objects, and seasoned with Alex Jones like titles with words like "morbid", "disturbing", "manipulation", "brainwashing" an the like repeated lots of times.
To make things even worse, there are also The Simpsons videos with previews starring censored versions of Rule 34 drawings talking about many ridiculous topics like Lenny is the real Bart's father or the future predicting abilities of the series.
UFOs[edit]
One day, NASA thought that could be a good idea to stream live space videos. So some people like that crazy Greek guy with punky hair took advantage and watched the very long videos looking for something to label as an UFO. Of course that couldn't be an asteroid or a human satellite but a spy satellite or flying saucer made by aliens that believe that spinning around the Earth is fun. Because even with an intelligence and technology way advanced than ours, seems that they ignore the fact that we already invented YouTube and NASA is already making live space videos.
The stupid planes[edit]
The original YouTube clickbait type. The preview shows two giant planes about to crash, but the video only shows the remains of a crashed small plane and an interview with a witness. Or could be a NatGeo or Discovery Channel documentary about a plane that crashed seventy years ago.
We can also find videos about planes crashed by unfortunate UFOs (whose casually had the shape of human combat planes), or the biggest plane of the world with ten thousand engines, but ended having really just six of them.
Reverse clickbait[edit]
See also: Couch Mummy
Is an incredible example of Reverse Psychology. It just takes to claim that the video has clickbait (with large uppercase letters and circles), to convince the smart YouTube users to click the video. Seems like accusing someone else of using clickbait is a proven method to raise the playback numbers even more when the author also does it.
Even more sophisticated is accusing oneself of using clickbait using titles like "I'M ACCUSED OF USING CLICKBAIT AND THIS HAPPENS..." used by some YouTubers.
Politically incorrect pretension[edit]
Is a common trick in WikiHow, but can appear also in other websites. Is about making a tutorial or guide about a questionable or censored topic and then teaching or explaining something opposite, different or just outside the original topic. For example, an article named "How to cheat in tests" would say things like "study with enough time before the test", "apply effective memory and learning techniques". A "How to be satanic" tutorial would say "Study the Bible", "Go regularly to church and think about the priest's sayings". A manual to defeat a dictator would say "Obey your tyrant at any moment without questioning him" and "Avoid any revolution, liberation movement o state strike". This type of contents reminds us of a Bart Simpson saying: "Do it or don't, but don't try."
Anti-clickbait[edit]
The strangest and type. It can have features of one or more of the previous ones: Arrows and circles, someone doing something, striking or fluorescent backgrounds, UPPERCASE TEXT, hidden messages, UFOs, sensationalist titles, emojis and even sex among other things. But happens that the video not just matches with the clickbait, is also of good quality with accurate information. Is the case with YouTubers whose really want to inform, teach or give good entertainment and have to resort to these dirty tricks in an attempt to compete against the previous scum. For example, a video named "A SCIENTIST POURS LIQUID IN A FLASK AND THIS HAPPENS" could be about a chemistry tutorial, experiment or teaching. Meanwhile a video named "Hidden messages in The Simpsons" could be about scientific and philosophical references in the series (yes, is a bore but at least it does not go as far like Rick and Morty) and a picture of a girl in a swimsuit could send to a summer fashion show. This resource may be also used by universities, news agencies, research centers, national and international organizations, educational authorities and other big and prestigous things whose resort to this dirty trick in an effort to seem "hip" and "young". This makes more than one person wonder if the goal really justifies the means.
Ragebait[edit]
The clickbait's evil twin. If regular clickbait is about getting attention at any price, the ragebait goes beyond and is about driving mad the audience by any means possible, like presenting a controversial opinion, an extremist viewpoint, an unpleasant subject, an insult o lecture directed to the audience o just a piece of junk without any sense. The point is to make the audience lose their temper to beef up the number of views and spread like a plague in social networks coupled with replies and insults. This way haters are duped into believing that they are destroying with their criticisms but they are really helping it to become more popular and profitable by giving it the attention it wants (even if is negative). There is an old internet adage: Do NOT feed the troll.
Who does use this trick?[edit]
- Many sensationalist Internet news sites (HuffPost, Buzzfeed, Mashable, Drudge Report, Breitbart and the like).
- Many famous YouTubers.
- Alt-Rights and SJW's. Both love it the same even if they deny it.
- Creepypasta videos.
- Lots of awful videos about the (failed) predictions of The Simpsons.
- WikiHow.
YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT IS BEHIND THESE LINKS!!![edit]
|
This page was originally sporked from Inciclopedia. |