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This is a consequence of writers at Business Insider and other brands being ranked by the number of clicks their pieces generate. Writing for them is more of a

This is a consequence of writers at Business Insider and other brands being ranked by the number of clicks their pieces generate. Writing for them is more of a social science than journalism, with specific words and phrasing A/B tested and Web page designs optimised to get you to stay on the page just a tiny bit longer (so Google doesn't penalise them for bounce rate). Ever recall how BI articles end with an unrelated, click bait video?

CM30 11y ago
Pretty much this in a nutshell. Indeed, if you ever want to know (another) reason a lot of news sites seem to be posting articles to troll or bait their reader, that's because the per click model incentivises stirring up angry mobs rather than starting a civil debate. So for any writers without anything meaningful to say... well, just find the most obnoxious, audience baiting thing possible, back it up with a bunch of thinly sourced 'support' posts and watch your article trend on Reddit within an hour or two. Or maybe on Twitter. It's also why comment sections were virually unmoderated until recently... a civil debate brings less comments than a heated flame war between lunatics.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  > It's also why comment sections were virually unmoderated until recently... a civil debate brings less comments than a heated flame war between lunatics. I've heard second-hand information about my national media platforms that they're (the media companies) actually seeding flame wars in comments on purpose - angry people coming back to respond to other angry people = much more eyeballs = more ad dollars flowing in.
_petronius 11y ago
I also see it in major newspapers like The Guardian. Particularly around political stories, like Jeremy Corbyn and his new shadow cabinet, they seem predisposed to describe every comment made about them as putting the politicians "under fire" or some other such melodramatic term. And then when you read the actual quotes in the article, they are fairly tame, gentle criticisms. This happened twice just this week, once with the (constructive, rather softball) comments made by a union leader about Corbyn himself (to which the reaction was something along the lines of "oh no, he's losing the support of his base!"), to the rather mild back-and-forth about John McDonnell's sarcastic crack about Mao in Parliament (which the media basically manufactured into a fake story, all the while implying that McDonnell is a crypto-communist, while he is nothing of the sort). Anyway, rather than it being about a specific subject, I guess my point is that I am pretty down on journalists in general these days, because chasing the story and filling the news cycle (in any medium) seems to have taken priority over actually substantive reporting of things that matter.
- domfletcher 11y ago
  This sort of thing is why I think Corbyn's strategy of opening distaining the media may ultimately pay off. I'm hoping that people will tune more and more of this noise out and then start going directly to source when they want to hear what someone has to say.
  - jensen123 11y ago
    The Internet certainly is making it a lot easier to go directly to the source, and skip the old-fashioned media.
- redthrowaway 11y ago
  >John McDonnell's sarcastic crack about Mao in Parliament (which the media basically manufactured into a fake story, all the while implying that McDonnell is a crypto-communist, while he is nothing of the sort). Is anyone saying he's a crypto-communist? All I've seen is that it's yet another example of Corbyn's shadow cabinet being fantastically terrible at politics. It's not feeding the "Labour are outright marxists" narrative, it's feeding the "Corbyn is incompetent and sooner or later the house of cards will fall" narrative.
  - _petronius 11y ago
    I guess I was being a bit hyperbolic. But Chuka Umunna's comment about how "I would never quote a communist" and the GHCQ noting the figures about deaths during the Great Leap Forward seemed to be a tacit implication that McDonnell was somehow endorsing Mao, rather than taking a swipe at Osborne.
- rfrank 11y ago
  Do you feel the same way about software devs who work for food delivery/laundry service startups and the like? Writing clickbait is no better or worse than "changing the world" one delivery at a time. Everyone's just chasing easy money.
  - 11y ago
ZoFreX 11y ago
This is nothing new, though. I think it's a mistake to blame social media, advertising, or clickbait - this has been happening far longer than any of them. Watch the news on TV or read a newspaper; how many times do they tell you that people are outraged, or asking questions, or something is up for debate, without showing so much as a tweet?
knughit 11y ago
Ohhhh that's why sites have a "Now watch this" vid at the end of articles? I saw that on....Daily Beast or somewhere.

CM30 11y ago

Pretty much this in a nutshell. Indeed, if you ever want to know (another) reason a lot of news sites seem to be posting articles to troll or bait their reader, that's because the per click model incentivises stirring up angry mobs rather than starting a civil debate. So for any writers without anything meaningful to say... well, just find the most obnoxious, audience baiting thing possible, back it up with a bunch of thinly sourced 'support' posts and watch your article trend on Reddit within an hour or two. Or maybe on Twitter. It's also why comment sections were virually unmoderated until recently... a civil debate brings less comments than a heated flame war between lunatics.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
> It's also why comment sections were virually unmoderated until recently... a civil debate brings less comments than a heated flame war between lunatics. I've heard second-hand information about my national media platforms that they're (the media companies) actually seeding flame wars in comments on purpose - angry people coming back to respond to other angry people = much more eyeballs = more ad dollars flowing in.

_petronius 11y ago

I also see it in major newspapers like The Guardian. Particularly around political stories, like Jeremy Corbyn and his new shadow cabinet, they seem predisposed to describe every comment made about them as putting the politicians "under fire" or some other such melodramatic term. And then when you read the actual quotes in the article, they are fairly tame, gentle criticisms. This happened twice just this week, once with the (constructive, rather softball) comments made by a union leader about Corbyn himself (to which the reaction was something along the lines of "oh no, he's losing the support of his base!"), to the rather mild back-and-forth about John McDonnell's sarcastic crack about Mao in Parliament (which the media basically manufactured into a fake story, all the while implying that McDonnell is a crypto-communist, while he is nothing of the sort). Anyway, rather than it being about a specific subject, I guess my point is that I am pretty down on journalists in general these days, because chasing the story and filling the news cycle (in any medium) seems to have taken priority over actually substantive reporting of things that matter.

domfletcher 11y ago
This sort of thing is why I think Corbyn's strategy of opening distaining the media may ultimately pay off. I'm hoping that people will tune more and more of this noise out and then start going directly to source when they want to hear what someone has to say.
- jensen123 11y ago
  The Internet certainly is making it a lot easier to go directly to the source, and skip the old-fashioned media.
redthrowaway 11y ago
>John McDonnell's sarcastic crack about Mao in Parliament (which the media basically manufactured into a fake story, all the while implying that McDonnell is a crypto-communist, while he is nothing of the sort). Is anyone saying he's a crypto-communist? All I've seen is that it's yet another example of Corbyn's shadow cabinet being fantastically terrible at politics. It's not feeding the "Labour are outright marxists" narrative, it's feeding the "Corbyn is incompetent and sooner or later the house of cards will fall" narrative.
- _petronius 11y ago
  I guess I was being a bit hyperbolic. But Chuka Umunna's comment about how "I would never quote a communist" and the GHCQ noting the figures about deaths during the Great Leap Forward seemed to be a tacit implication that McDonnell was somehow endorsing Mao, rather than taking a swipe at Osborne.
rfrank 11y ago
Do you feel the same way about software devs who work for food delivery/laundry service startups and the like? Writing clickbait is no better or worse than "changing the world" one delivery at a time. Everyone's just chasing easy money.
- 11y ago

ZoFreX 11y ago

This is nothing new, though. I think it's a mistake to blame social media, advertising, or clickbait - this has been happening far longer than any of them. Watch the news on TV or read a newspaper; how many times do they tell you that people are outraged, or asking questions, or something is up for debate, without showing so much as a tweet?

knughit 11y ago

Ohhhh that's why sites have a "Now watch this" vid at the end of articles? I saw that on....Daily Beast or somewhere.