science

I dunno. I’m not really sure how you can claim it is clickbait when nobody was baited into clicking? For me, there are effective headlines and ineffective headlines. Clickbait is when you have an effective headline that accompanies an article that isn’t worth clicking into, which baits you into clicking through to show you ads, and doesn’t deliver on its promise. For me, this is the opposite of that, it’s an ineffective headline because no-one clicked through, but had they, the article overdelivers on its promise. And on further reflection, I think you’re right that headlines can be inherently clickbait-y, independent of their contents, but it still doesn’t feel like it applies here — for me, the bait in clickbait is like the bait in a rabbit trap, and you don’t bait rabbit traps with bait that rabbits don’t enjoy. This doesn’t fall into the clickbait category for me, it’s just ineffective. But that’s mostly semantics, and I don’t begrudge you a different definition. I just…kinda don’t really mind it that much? I got a commenter with high media literacy to engage in a good discussion, and no drive-bys from people who didn’t read the article? And generally speaking, I would much rather the Defector use their scarce resources to pay quality writers, rather than an SEO specialist who gets people to click through?