Fair point, but I think the headline is more effective this way and, unlike most things I'd label as clickbait, the payoff in the article is satisfying enough t

Fair point, but I think the headline is more effective this way and, unlike most things I'd label as clickbait, the payoff in the article is satisfying enough that I don't feel tricked. The way I think of clickbait is this: You should always write the most effective headline you can, which I'd measure in terms of the click-thru rate. But if the content doesn't pay off, I'll stop trusting you. For example, I'll gladly click any clickbait from Cracked because their articles almost always pay off. If they say they have 23 surprising things, you can bet there will be 23 things that surprise me. By contrast, I'd never click a BuzzFeed link because they spent years proving their headlines never pay off. Update: You know, it's cool if you need to downvote things, but it'd be helpful if you had the courage to comment on why you're downvoting. I don't care about the points (it's just gamification folks), but my obsessive brain is now wondering who I offended and how. Is it for disliking BuzzFeed? For liking Cracked? For suggesting clickbait-style headlines can be justified? For thinking this particular headline was justified? It reminds me of an old job I had where everyone in the company did an annual evaluation of everyone else in the company, anonymously. We just rated people, with no ability to explain why we gave them that rating. It ended up serving no instructive purpose and was just a way of finding out how many people hated you.