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
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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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