Ask HN: Why are clickbait titles bad?

1 points by luchadorvader 10 years ago | 5 comments

A lot of times when I'm reading HN I notice there are a lot of people complaining about articles having clickbait titles. I have always been under the assumption that that was the entire purpose of a title which is to grab the readers attention and get them to read the article or in other words, in the context of the internet, be a bait for clicks. While it's not an excuse to have a misleading title, some articles are less technical and meant for a more general consumption so are they expected to have a title similar to that of one more serious and technical? Even if the article is crap and the title is misleading it will either be filtered out of the front page or could even possibly insight a really good discussion. So instead of complaining about weather a title is clickbait, maybe it would be better to just explain what is wrong about the article instead to help prevent any misinformation or just ignore it and let it sink?

JoeAltmaier 10 years ago |

The usual clickbait title will get you to a page by asking a question or leaving something out. "Do butterflies have the dna from two different creatures?!?" (btw The answer to those is always "No") Once you're there, you find its a waste of time. Just to get some impressions or whatever.

I've stopped clicking anything that doesn't answer the question in the title. But that means I can hardly click on anything, especially facebook posts. Because even my friends don't bother to label them! Its so easy to say "This article explains X" but they just leave the clickbait title. So I guess I'll become a hermit.

"This man became a hermit for the Weirdest reason!"

luchadorvader 10 years ago | |

And that's the type of reaction I would encourage. Yes you stop clicking on a lot of articles, but you're less likely to waste your time. I find that instead of going to around yelling clickbait, just ignore it, or at least make your time useful and either build something from the article or explain why it's bad so others could learn to ignore more stuff that source

dudul 10 years ago |

I usually call "clickbait titles" titles that, after reading the article, end up being misleading. Either because they end up having very little to do with the article, or sometimes even telling the opposite story the article is telling.

Understood that headlines are supposed to make you want to read the article, with clickbait titles there is this feeling that you've been tricked. Tricked in spending a chunk of your time to read a story that ended up having very little to do with the title that was use to "sell" it to you.

luchadorvader 10 years ago | |

I understand your point of view, I guess I'm more bothered by how it seems to me that people are quickly to yell clickbait and just that which if anything could bring more attention to the article. I almost feel likes it's yelling "Don't look!", which is going to make me look.

gus_massa 10 years ago |

Clickbaits are good for the journalist/newspaper (if they don't value their reputation) but are bad for us, the readers. So it's better (for us) to change the title to a good title before submitting it to HN.