
We Analyzed 100M Headlines - thmslee
http://buzzsumo.com/blog/most-shared-headlines-study/
======
azinman2
This is why democracy is broken.

Attention is scarce. So when you combine all the resources and effort that
marketing departments from Fox News to Charmin toilet paper, add Facebook as a
primary medium, throw iPhones and ADHD into the mix, the only tactics that
work appeal to base instincts. Make something flashy, attention grabbing, and
short lived.

When that happens to ALL information, there’s no place left for balanced
thinking that doesn’t come to some immediate divisive conclusion that just
confirms what you already believed. There isn’t enough attention to get depth
or thought provoking material in and have it win in your A/B tests.

So what happens? Democracy loses as base radicalization is mechanically forced
by the attention economy to win out.

~~~
JBReefer
This is fairly well understood, as is the fact that none of the parties
involved - Facebook, the media, or the political parties - have an ounce of
incentive to change.

So, what do we do? It may be becoming apparent that the theory that democracy
does not work in a world with social media is correct, but what can be done
with that information?

For every Buzzfeed you kill there's another, for every social network with
detailed discussion there's a bigger, dumber one.

I would love someone to propose something radical, but the only new ideas I've
heard are monarchy (from people that also tend to think minorities are a
problem) which is terrifying, or Chinese style rule, which honestly sort of
seems to be working? I have no idea, I'm a software developer, not a political
theorist, but you have hit the nail on the head.

~~~
888uuii
Here, I have a proposal for you:

Imagine a world government wherein the killing, torture, and imprisonment of
people is illegal, as the core clause of the state. In this state, the core
clause does not permit the interests of the state over those of the
individual; the state exists to support an individual.

Imagine a political party which comes to power through the co-option of the
public sphere to support the above goals, while preaching that this party
alone is capable of bringing about the revolution. Imagine a single leader
which is the beating heart.

Imagine this party preaching that the global economy must be reverse-
engineered to adhere to the above-mentioned goal. Imagine that technical
renaissance is trumpeted.

Imagine this totalitarian state and its transparent principles. Transparent
enough to call itself totalitarian.

Now imagine the orange flag flying on the marble arch on a clear day.

~~~
chickenfries
Sorry, what is the orange flag a reference to?

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DamnInteresting
Human consumption of clickbait seems to have strong similarities to our
outsized appetites for fat and sugar. In regards to the tempting foods, these
cravings are presumably artifacts of slow evolution; we evolved to an
environment where we should seize every opportunity to consume these scarce,
high-energy foods, and we have not yet adapted to the new reality where many
people have plenty to eat.

I wonder if there's some similar primitive drive behind the unhealthy appetite
for clickbait; a yearning for information that may help us to survive and
reproduce. Some of the high-performing headlines seem to frame the information
as something that will affect the reader personally.

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bobosha
not really sure about the negative doom-and-gloom reactions, this has existed
since time immemorial and will for as long humans as a species exist. Our
brains are wired to react to such content, not sure you can draw a line
between social media and a purported dumbing down of humanity. We live in a
time where for the first time 50% of humanity has access to information that
was restricted to a tiny elite. Sure cat videos and celeb pics might be
predominant, but with that comes access to wikipedia, mit ocw etc.

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AznHisoka
Fascinating, if not depressing analysis of clickbait. I guess one of the sad
takeaways is that people want to be told how to react when they read something
(make you cry, give you goosebumps, shocked to see).

~~~
chiefofgxbxl
Yikes, these headlines then are just different _flavors_ of emotions, no
different than ice-cream being chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, etc. And
there's a flavor to satisfy everyone's taste.

Want to feel sad? Read this article. Want to feel uplifted? Read this one.
Want to feel outraged? Click here!

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MR4D
So now there is a cheat sheet of terms for people to use in their click bait
headlines to get even more clicks!

ARRRRRRRRGGGGHH!

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notadoc
This is kind of depressing and does not bode well for future information
dispersal.

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ricksharp
This is why the reason is only 1 in 10 will make you... (Can we guess?)...

------
mwizzle
Where can you collect the Facebook engagement data used for this analysis?

~~~
AznHisoka
Facebool Graph api: [https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-
api/reference/v2....](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-
api/reference/v2.9/url)

------
jpttsn
A lot of unstated dubious assumptions. Is the headline decisive? I bet these
headlines were accompanied by pictures; maybe that's the signal.

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jondubois
It also depends on the channel. I think that "We analyzed x" and "...this is
what we found" are pretty popular on HN.

~~~
jwblackwell
Yep, most of these charts are based on Facebook engagement. If you anayzed the
top trigrams of headlines posted to HN I think you would get quite a different
picture, though some similarities as you say.

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ivm
The analysis of clickbait has a clickbait title itself, they even added
brackets which are believed to increase CTR.

~~~
AznHisoka
Sincere question: What is wrong with clickbait if the article fulfills the
promise? The title here seems to be what the article is about.

~~~
dredmorbius
It's a cheap shot. It demonstrates a lack of integrity or character.

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thisisit
I am wondering if there is a similar study for other stuff too ? Like say
email, blog posts etc?

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SimeVidas
Can you guess why this will make only 1 in 10 people cry tears of joy?
[https://media.giphy.com/media/kFgzrTt798d2w/giphy.gif](https://media.giphy.com/media/kFgzrTt798d2w/giphy.gif)

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vpribish
clickbait may get attention but does it change minds? I count a clickbait
headline against the publisher and author.

------
dredmorbius
This is valuable information, though depressingly presented.

The article reminds me strongly, and for similar reasons, of Clay Johnson's
_The Information Diet_ , a book I found overall tremendously disappointing --
this review describes most of the reasons:

[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/254961608?book_show_ac...](https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/254961608?book_show_action=true)

In particular, Johnson keeps presenting the situation of low-quality
information as a matter of choice, whilst flagrantly ignoring two of the
massive elephants in the room:

1\. Search-engine and social-media rankings drive much of the engagement. A
slight tweak to those algorithms can ... make Upworthy downworthy:

[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=upworthy](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=upworthy)

2\. Agnotology. Culturally-induced ignorance, or slightly less charitably,
those with more money than God lying to the world loudly enough to prevent any
other message from being heard. The story of corporate-financed
disinformation, and the persistence of it, even to the very same individals
and organisations, over numerous campaigns -- lead, asbestos, tobacco, CFCs,
nuclear power, and now fossil-fuel carbon emissions -- is absolutely
depressing.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt)

And if you think the practice is new or particular to the present, it's not.
There's a delightful little book, the transcript of a speech, by Hamilton
Holt, _Commercialism and Journalism_. It's the text of an address he gave at
U.C. Berkeley in 1909, on the phenomenal growth of the publishing industry,
and of the advertising which fueled it. He quotes an anonymous publisher:

"There is no such thing in America as an independent press. I am paid for
keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. If I should
allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, before twenty-
four hours my occupation, like Othello's, would be gone. The business of a New
York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to
vilivy, to fawn at the foot of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race
for his daily bread. We are the tools or vassals of the rich men behind the
scenes. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all the
property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."

[https://archive.org/stream/commercialismjou00holtuoft#page/2...](https://archive.org/stream/commercialismjou00holtuoft#page/2/mode/2up)

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id122015
i ignore emotions headlines and those about me.

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gitpusher
Yuck.

