The entire news industry is in dire straits so clickbait is only going to get worse. I remember it was just 10 years ago, the news industry was desperately tryi

The entire news industry is in dire straits so clickbait is only going to get worse. I remember it was just 10 years ago, the news industry was desperately trying to game the SEO to stay afloat, now they have entire social media teams dedicated to clickbaiting headlines and spamming stories on social media. WaPo got a huge cash infusion from Bezos ( AMZN founder ) and they hired a bunch of social media "experts" so they will be at the forefront of the new clickbait norm. Despite Bezos' assertions, he is going to expect "dividends" from his investment in WaPo. Whereas other industries fully recovered from the financial crisis via cheap debt, the news industry only stopped the bleeding. Their wound hasn't healed and only that cheap debt goes away, the blooding letting in the industry is going to happen again. So you can't blame them for trying any desperate tactic to stave off layoffs/collapse/etc. But if you think about it, the news industry has always been at the forefront of clickbait. In the late 1800s, during the heyday of yellow journalism, Hearts and Pulitzer intentionally lied and pushed clickbait via their news properties. If you were around during 2000, you know that the news industry feasted on the Y2K scaremongering clickbaits. I think the clickbait was always there. It's just now, people are more aware of it.