Clickbait; a concept where an attention-grabbing headline or cover image is used to deceivingly hook a reader/viewer into clicking a post, only for them to find that it has nothing even remotely to do with what they expected.
Where Did It Come From?
This concept has grown widely from the usual hyperbolic headlines of tabloids and permeated the online sphere (as most trends do). It grew in popularity on YouTube, where creators would title videos things such as “My Uber Driver Kidnapped Me!”, where in actual fact, their Uber driver simply took a wrong turn and had to re-route. This phenomenon has also wiggled its way onto Instagram. Here, videos are displayed with a still shot taken from the video as its cover. Several people take advantage of this by using including a random one second scene in their video that they use as a cover.
Enough Is Enough!
We’re tired of it. It has been one too many videos that have been excitedly clicked on only to realise that it was just another boring video of a something we’ve seen one hundred times over. We’re tired of fake injections, we’re tired of knife contour and we’re tired of the wagging finger that appears after every random item is brought out in the video (whose sole purpose was to act as clickbait, not a new and innovative way to slice apples or apply contour).
What once was an admittedly smart and effective way to boost your views has now cheapened the quality of videos on social media and can even directly damage your brand if used too heavily. Who wants to come across as overly dramatic, insincere and possibly even a liar?
At the end of the day, if it’s too good to be true, don’t give it a view.
P.S. Sorry for the clickbait title.
What about you, are you tired of clickbait?
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