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How Does Clickbait Work?

2016-07-01
what happens on this episode of tech wiki will absolutely shock you well maybe not and don't worry we haven't sold the channel to BuzzFeed today's episode is all about clickbait a certain style of content and headline writing that's geared towards trying to get people to click on something as much as possible often at the expense of quality information but what makes clickbait click Beatty anyways the answer lies in our own psychological tendencies as different as people are there are certain things that the brain generally just really likes information presented in an ordered list for example is especially appealing which is why you always see the slideshows of the 17 most important One Direction moments or whatever these work because they spread information in a structured way and also present themselves with a degree of authority a list with a precise number of elements seems more certain and has more finality than a general headline it's very appealing to our brains which want to cut through the crap and understand things quickly very ironic considering the list themselves are often completely freakin useless and even for clickbait T headlines that don't direct you to a numbered list the use of authoritative sounding words such as science the best or destroyed is common in order to appeal to that same desire for certainty in our lives which also explains why many articles that try to promote half-baked things like political opinions claim that a certain argument destroys the other one other clickbait headlines flip the script of how journalism was usually done in the past by merely teasing at what the content has inside instead of dog bites man you see this man confronted a dog and you won't believe what happened next this encourages the user to click through instead of giving away the articles meat right in the headline this kind of direct appeal to our natural curiosity results in the reward center of our brain lighting up when you find out what the answer to the click bTW question or tease in the headline was even if the content inside turns out to be totally stupid this has often been referred to as the curiosity gap which is a key part of how the website upworthy operates up worthies tendency to only place hints as to the actual content in their titles has led their articles to being some of the most shared content on all of Facebook and of course clickbait has gone beyond legitimate sites well as legitimate as they can be to being used in ads designed to look like real articles although quite a few tech savvy users have developed an eye for what's legitimate content and what's advertising or just use an ad blocker or something the enticing headlines still draw a lot of people and have for a long time indeed the arguable ancestors of modern clickbait are the vapid but i catching headlines of yesteryear from the yellow journalism in new york city that preceded the spanish-american war in the late 1800s to grocery store tabloids claiming that the royal family is actually from mars with the sort of sensationalism playing to some pretty fundamental aspects of human nature I wouldn't expect clickbait to go away anytime soon but don't worry I promise you that you'll never see a tech wiki episode titled the 22 cutest CPUs you'll see all day with a lynda.com membership you can watch and learn from top experts who are passionate about teaching and their field these top experts have thousands of videos for on-demand courses that you can learn on your own schedule and your own pace you can browse each course transcript to follow along and search for an answer or skip to that point of the video which I actually like a lot personally taking notes as you go is easy and you can refer to them later on you can even download tutorials and watch them on the go including access on your iOS or Android device create and save playlists of courses that you want to watch to customize your learning path or share with friends or colleagues or even team members so whether you're looking to become an industry expert you're passionate about just some random hobby or you want to learn something new patro lynda.com slash tech quickie and sign up for your free 10-day trial thanks for watching guys like it if you liked it dislike if you disliked it don't forget to get subscribed and let us know in the comments down below if there's some like psychology of something style episode but you'd like us to check out in the future don't forget to click on this video which hopefully has a click Beatty title so you actually do it and has something to do with it super fun or something have fun over there your your super interested in what may or might not have happened you'll never guess yeah
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