Not Another Clickbait Article! Why The Future Of Writing Has To Change

Journalism was long a steady, fact-based industry where you would get your daily news from a trusted newspaper, only for a certain magnate in Rupert Murdoch and events in New York around the Son of Sam mid-70’s, who saw capitalism in anarchy, to change that.

Fast forward to today and it seems that nearly every article is the same sensationalism-led attention-seeking article that (if we are honest) doesn’t really provide true value to people anymore.

The Emergence Of The Clickbait Article Culture

At first, it was shocking, even captivating. When a breaking news story would grip your senses to something you haven’t really seen before you’d want more, like a drug. Rupert Murdoch knew what he was doing, but did he envision the consequences on the psyche of people down the road? Did he even care? Did he realise how it would fuel more liberalism?

Netflix has made a fortune from this same approach, taking provocative documentaries and series to a new level. There are teams of people on social media platforms ensuring that dopamine kicks are the backbone of their business model in order to keep people glued to the platform to attract advertisers.

However, over time people became more desensitized to these tactics. We started realising what was happening, that dopamine rushes were implanted to influence us. Suddenly, when you hear a shocking story, it’s now just more news, it’s almost expected (but we still read it anyway).

When a wall in the public psyche occurs it just leads to an even greater push, even more sensationalism.

In order to gain attention tabloids wouldn’t just wait for real, shocking stories anymore, they would create ones. They would set the path for fake news, and it wasn’t just the right-wing, it was increasingly the left too.

Shocking, and in today’s digital days, clickbaited stories would make you want to turn the page or click onto articles, and with the growing amount of news – where the likes of Twitter allows anyone and everyone to be a ‘news source’ (whether true or not) – the competition in the attention economy grew further and further.

It doesn’t even have to be mainstream stories these days. Even fairly placid articles around general life can become sensationalised through their title.

And it’s hard to escape the trend. Even if you wanted to you would find it hard to put out a title to an article that didn’t lead to gaining attention in some way these days. Everyone’s at it, and in a sense, you have to as well, or do we?

What Is Main Problem With Clickbait Articles?

Let’s take a typically pushed clickbait topic, money, and more specifically, making money online. It often goes along the same lines of ‘I made money talking about how you can make money too’.

People may well click on an article that says it’s easy to make money online because they are lured in to get rich quick schemes that serve our energy-preserving survival instincts well, but in reality, it leaves 99% of people disappointed when they realize that most of what they just read is often useless and impractical to their own goals.

It can lead people to think that anything in practice should just be as easy as a click of a button, and if they read it then their problems will be solved.

In a nutshell, it becomes passive disillusion and false promises.

The only ones making money from it are the Murdoch-inspired capitalists who aim to get as many eyeballs as possible on their fake or incredibly vague story, whilst the reader isn’t really getting much value at all.

It’s no secret that we humans like instant gratification these days, and these kinds of articles are part of the cause.

The idea of a quick win is so embedded into society today. So much so that if an article doesn’t sound sensationalized and captivating we subliminally think it must not have any value, but in reality, some of the best value out there is not found in clickbait articles, and (therefore) in some cases not found at all.

It’s a bit of a catch-22 for writers and readers alike.

Unfortunately, most clickbait articles seldom hold the types of valuable content that either bring readership back or which lead towards more valuable tools such as coaching or courses that could actually help people with their problems (and which people would much prefer to pay for).

Clickbait articles can, at their worst, create a false culture of writers and give writing a bad name.

You see, the truth is most people who do make money from writing don’t feel the need to boast about it or publish figures.

They are more likely bothered about writing and adding value to their readers, yet amongst all the ‘look at me, I’m doing this tactic, making this, you can too’, actual value is harder to come by.

Instead, it’s like a cat amongst the pigeons where people are writing what attracts attention rather than what actually helps.

Beyond this, clickbait content becomes very unoriginal very quick, and whilst the first one or two people who did it may well have found a ‘formula’ that worked for bringing people into reading their articles, after a while, people do finally realize that its simply all it is, a formula, a ploy to make people think that they have to do this same.

Then the same type of ‘winning formula’ articles become saturated with copycats who are desperate for the same attention, all the while detracting away from original and truly valuable content.

The worst part is that it’s not because they aren’t capable of writing original and valuable content, but because they’ve been sucked in by the formula of clickbaiting, and their writing soon becomes a logical process of ‘I need people to see it’ rather than the more original and valuable ‘I am going to create something that is actually useful!’.

Why Do Clickbait Articles Still Exist, Even If People Know It’s Void Of Real Value?

The often valueless clickbait articles find their way to the top because they are written for a popularity contest and to flood SEO keyword tactics. There’s more writing to be heard than writing to inform, and more writing for robots than writing for humans.

Readers either soon find that there’s not much value beyond the heavily tilted title (and with instant gratification being a main pull on people these days, they just move into the next false promise), or they become drawn into them thinking popular must mean truth (when often it’s not the case).

This latter could lead them to follow the exact same method and write their own article about how ‘I made money talking about making money too’, only adding to the value extracting capitalist-led journalism, rather than leading towards true value creation.

Before we know it there’s a flood of articles with the same clickbait articles promising the same thing, which leads to even grander claims to gain attention.

People still fall for it because, of course, these types of articles might seem interesting on the surface. ‘Wow, I can make $3,000 in a week writing an article if I just follow the same generic stuff this other person is talking about’.

Writers understandably hope an attention-grabbing headline can lure readers in to then suddenly convert them into paying customers or loyal readership, but why would someone want to trust or follow you if you are at first effectively lying to them to gain their trust?

It sounds very counterintuitive, but it happens everywhere within this attention economy, mainly because on the surface the simplistic idea of making life appear easier or exciting appeals. Quick progress, yes please. Minimal effort, give me some of that.

We are hard-wired for survival, so anything that gives us the impression that we will be able to preserve energy whilst progressing in life appeals to us, but in reality, this seldom happens as we only really grow from implementation and perseverance.

How We Lose Ourselves To Perceived Value And Follower Counts

When a subject is trending we might feel more inclined to read or write about it, after all, it’s in our consciousness at that time.

In today’s digital world much of our perceived value is created based on metrics like follower counts and likes. We subconsciously follow people with more followers even before knowing if their content is useful or not, we just perceive it to be.

The same goes when choosing article content to write. We end up choosing subjects solely based on perceived value and the hope that it might bump up followers, but while this might seem like a wise move to find more reach, it isn’t going to help us, or our readers, if it doesn’t add real, tangible value that helps someone think, change, act or learn.

And sometimes, like in this article, those lessons need to be repeated so they sink in, as we so often don’t get real value as we are looking too much for the easy, generic, surface-level false promises that sound good but have little substance.

Creating generic advice that has been regurgitated thousands of times might lead to followers at first, if it’s around a trending topic that makes life appear easier, like making money online, but it will likely lead to false perceived value, and little actual sales or loyal readership.

As any marketing guru worth their salt will tell you ‘you are better off having 10 followers who are loyal readers, rather than 1,000 followers who aren’t’.

Clickbait articles set up the illusion of perceived value, as well as bloated but valueless follower counts.

Chances are that the followers you attract when writing clickbaited, speculative, sensationalized, or fake news articles will be the same type of people who are looking for freebies and get-rich-quick solutions.

They will move on to the next clickbait article as quickly as they found the last one, and unlikely return because there either wasn’t real value in there, or they weren’t looking for it (in which case they aren’t the kind of followers you want anyway).

Furthermore, perceived value changes with speculation. Real value is more of a constant. Once the speculation or buzz has come and gone what remains left is the real value something offers, so if you were writing solely for popular trends then once that trend passes, so to do the followers you amounted.

It’s much better to focus on adding real value so they will come back regardless of whether something is trending or not.

Why The Future Of Writing Has No Choice But To Change?

If this article isn’t clear enough about the pitfalls of clickbait article tactics then let’s think about one truth about the internet.

It’s saturated, and it’s becoming more saturated by the day.

When you have millions of articles/posts added to the internet each day there becomes this undeniable truth that it gets harder and harder for your article to be found.

Today people are spending more and more time essentially getting fewer and fewer readers, so shouting harder isn’t really going to help if you are already at full voice (you just end up losing your voice, and energy).

The future of writing online simply can’t go on like this because it’s leading to less and less quality content being created, or quality content being lost amongst the masses shouting to be heard.

It’s like Einstein being too shy in today’s world to be heard, and we’d end up losing so much talent because of it.

Why create a social media post that will be far down the wall by the next day anyway?

Surely the shift has to turn back to quality or quantity. To find time to focus on something meaningful.

It may feel natural to want to join the clickbait bandwagon in order to gain more attention, but we should be thinking about how we can add better value and still be found without shouting from the rooftops.

Part of the problem isn’t really our fault but those platform creators who glorified perceived value based on likes and follower counts.

A good start would be if we could simply remove those metrics, and force people to read based on interest and intrigue again, rather than on popularity.

Popularity contents only prevent original thinking. They stop real value from being created and lead to a huge wasteland of outdated or redundant content. The internet is awash with so much junk or fad content.

If you want to make a difference with your articles then consider writing for the reader in mind, write about something you are competent in, and not for popularity.

Work on finding a loyal readership and creating more value.

Now if you want a real kick up the backside and still don’t think there’s an issue with clickbait articles, then imagine a worst-case scenario where AI is programmed to read attention-seeking as a main factor in bot-written content that polarizes and influences people into political beliefs, buying habits and important decisions even more so than today.

Our ability to think originally will only become less if that scenario plays out.