
13 reasons why clickbait headlines are bad - remy_luisant
https://luisant.ca/headlines
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blowski
'Clickbait' has become a cliched term on sites like Reddit and HN. The purpose
of a headline is to encourage people to read the article, not to provide a
concise but accurate summary of the article.

The problem with clickbait is that the article doesn't live up to the promise
of the headline. If I click on an article about "34 ways to get a flatter
stomach - you won't believe number 7" but there's just a long list of debunked
remedies and unfounded assertions, that's a problem with the article, not the
headline. People then share the article without reading it, so crap articles
end up polluting search result pages and newsfeeds. So now we've started to
associate enticing headlines with poor quality articles, because so often it's
true.

But getting rid of good headlines isn't going to solve the problem of poor
quality articles, or people not reading content that they share.

~~~
corecoder
I Don't know. When something important actually happens, newspapers just say
it plainly, without riddles and silly comments. When WWII started, british
newspapers didn't title: something awful just happened, they titled BRITAIN AT
WAR.

When anybody titles: Something important actually happened, guess what?, you
can be sure that nothing important actually happened.

~~~
blowski
That's one type of article. Clearly there's a world of difference between "10
ways to improve your SEO" and "Britain at War". If we only write articles in
the event of the latter, it will be a strange world.

