It is no surprise that when people get bored, they tend to surf the internet. It may be a distraction from work or maybe to just kill time. Many people that have browsed websites such as Buzzfeed for a long enough period of time may wonder how they had ended up at their current destination. By just clicking on that first article of “Top 17 Shows to Stream on Netflix”, you could end up at “18 Signs Saved by The Bell Ruined Your Life”. Clickbait is to blame for the loss of, hopefully, not too much of your life.
Clickbait is a way for internet sites to generate online advertising revenue. This is often done by placing an article that would most likely get the users attention. Often the headline for the ad or potentially linked article is in a large font with a bright color. The user will then shift attention to a shocking or questionable picture, if there is one present. The attention is then focused to a short sentence or two to vaguely explain the picture, which urges the reader to click to learn more. The person viewing does not even have to make any action besides clicking on the advertisement to make clickbait successful. In media grammar, the physical traits of the text such as the font size, bold, and color can influence how a viewer depicts the ad along with others given in Table 2 (Meyrowitz 100). According to Meyrowitz, these influences are usually focused on during print media, such as newspapers or magazines, but the internet is no exception. Meyrowitz states that, “key grammar variables that can be manipulated in types of media to create certain impressions”.
The following picture is a good example. The bright red letters attract the reader to ad. The color in this instance suggests a sense of urgency. The headline then raises the question of why do they hate her. The picture reveals an older women seemingly peeling off her old age. The word local is used to try and form a relationship with the average viewer. The cheap price of five dollars makes the unrealistic picture seem a little more reasonable. Like the headline, the “learn the truth now” button is in red to show its importance and tries to give the readers just one final push. Realistically would most people fall for this obviously photo shopped image? The answer to that is probably not, but there will surely be some people that fall for this or are simply bored enough to see what it is about.
Another example, as seen below, is a combination of an interesting photo and a potential list to pique the interest of the reader. The real question is why won’t you believe it? The ridiculous picture of the wrestler given, may make the viewer wonder how much worse can it get? While some may wonder what kind of costume could possibly be worse than the “magic wrestler”? While the color of the words may not stand out too much, the neon green outfit in the picture does more than enough to draw the eye of anyone scrolling down a website.
The reason ads like this are displayed online is because it is so easy for it to spread. Websites like Buzzfeed and the Huffingtonpost are good examples of sites that house myriad forms of clickbait. Advertisers want the viewers to share it with others on social media sites, such as Facebook or Twitter.
Sources
Meyrowitz, Joshua. (1998), Multiple media literacies. Journal of Communication, 48: 96–108
Nick, Wray. “42 Wrestlers You Won’t Believe Actually Existed.” BuzzFeed. 7 Nov. 2014. Web. 27 Jan. 2015
Jessica Ruggiero says
I really enjoyed your post due to the fact that I am definitely a victim of starting off on one website, and an hour will go by and i’m still scrolling through. I thought you provided good examples, especially the last one about sights like Buzzfeed and the Huffington Post advertising a combination of an interesting photo with a potential list to interest the viewers to read them, there for hopefully leading them to share the article on other social media such as Facebook. Every time I am on Facebook and scroll down my time line I see many different buzzfeed post being shared and more then half the time I do succumb to reading them. Advertising on social media is everywhere in today’s society. There several ads that are promoted every day on twitter meaning it will come up on everybody’s timeline, and even snap chat is now having advertising promotion “stories” that will also come up on anybody who has a snap chats friend list. This shows how easily ads spread across the internet without us even having any control over them.
Mackenzie Rose Liberatori says
Hello, I enjoyed reading your post for this week. Your content was so interesting to me because it’s something so prevalent in our everyday lives that we don’t even think about. I’m often victim of many clickbait ads due to strange and interesting article titles that leave you hanging and force you to click to reveal their contents. This is used especially on lower tier internet journalism sites like The Daily Mail. I can attest to wasting an hour surfing the site as a distraction and eventually getting sucked into the ridiculous headlines that the site features in rows (often with strange/ unflattering/ disturbing pictures) on its front page. The tailoring of advertisements actually scares me in a way. It’s arguable that advertising has evolved vastly from what used to be the norm while surfing the internet. Different sites often require in their terms of service agreements that they use cookies and collect other personal information to “personalize your web experience.” What exactly is okay for other parties to know about you and what is invasion of privacy? Another example that reminded me of your point is the newly designed facebook mobile app with a messenger that requires access to your photos, videos, phone number, contacts, and location.
axs5449 says
I thought your post was very interesting, especially because it is so relevant in today’s society. There are times I definitely find myself going to a website such as Buzzfeed to take a quiz or read an article and then an hour and a half later I’m still there, 7 articles and 5 quizzes later. It is definitely true that these internet sites try to use eye-catching pictures or fonts/font colors when trying to get internet users to direct their attention to such sections of their website. Also, after a specific user spends some time on certain websites, it’s also interesting that the little pictures and headlines displayed will be tailored specifically to the viewer. For example, if you visit a clothing site once or twice, check out the ads that pop up in your news feed on Facebook the next time you go on–most likely one of them will be for the clothing site you just visited recently. It’s very interesting how the Internet can do this in order to entice users to travel over to their webpage. I also think you bring up an interesting point about how easily these ads can spread on the Internet. It is very true that advertisers and these webpages just want you to share their link on your social media sites in order to get your friends to also click and travel to the links.