This is probably a pointless argument, because I will heartily agree this is all about semantics that are not locked into the language :). But I believe a quit

This is probably a pointless argument, because I will heartily agree this is all about semantics that are not locked into the language :). But I believe a quite acceptable distinction between 'clickbait' and a 'lead-in' or what-have-you is that the article A) does tell you what the secret is that was promised by the headline, and B) the secret is to the point of the article and not overly sensationalized by the title. I'll borrow Wikipedia's definition: "Clickbait is a form of false advertisement which uses hyperlink text or a thumbnail link that is designed to attract attention and entice users to follow that link and read, view, or listen to the linked piece of online content, with a defining characteristic of being deceptive, typically sensationalized or misleading." What I'm focusing on is what wikipedia calls the 'defining characteristic', which is what separates it from headlines intended to build suspense. In other words, a title is not clickbait if it tries to entice you with tantalizingly withheld information, it is clickbait if it lures you into an article that does not provide the information thusly withheld, or it turns out the information was inaccurately implied by the title. In the same way, a piece of food that entices a fish is only bait if it will not provide a meal but instead put the fish in a situation they did not intend on being in (getting caught). If you extend clickbait to situations like this article, there isn't really a word left for the ones that are actively misleading. For example there's a newspaper that keeps getting me to click on its stuff in Google News because it tells me an asteroid almost blew up Earth, when in fact the asteroid had an infintesimal chance of doing so. That is clickbait. Having worked in content recommendations quite a bit, I can say it's quite a painful situation. What would make the above article title clickbait would have been if it turned out he found spoiled milk in the freezer, or some other pedestrian product. Which happens quite a bit in Internet syndicated media.