The barrage of sites with mind-numbingly stupid content and clickbait titles is neither new nor exhilarating.
However, ad-mongering, for the lack of a better word, and short-shorter-shortest attention spans of people, when paired with the ubiquity of technological access has made them garishly visible and overwhelming, sometimes to the point of frustration, and oftentimes, far beyond.
Here's a list of reasons why these word-bundles posing as "articles" are a force of evil. Also, the mandatory "You won't believe number 7!"
- Their titles offer little to no information about the actual content.
- Their content is usually unnecessary at best.
- Oversimplifications are not just made and brushed over, but celebrated.
- They are mostly opinion-pieces, with the opinion being "I am better than you" or "Yoohoo, You get a stereotype, you get a stereotype, everybody gets a stereotype! There's enough for everyone."
- The primary purpose of these articles is to entice with a title that tugs at heartstrings of potential readers, so that their clicks help earn ad revenue.
- The secondary purpose is to reinforce biases, stereotypes and self-indulgence.
- For some reason, a vast section of the populace believe other people share their biases and would love to read fluff pieces of no consequence.
- Most use cringeworthy images/gifs they don't hold the rights to publish.
- The authors are often deluded enough to think they have invested this new awesome format no one ever though of.
- The grammar is, well, horrendous on most occasions.
Notable trivia:
- This post has the highest number of quotes I have ever had, scare or otherwise. If one chooses to be pedantic, yes, I mean quotation marks. There, there...
- The list is 0.43252003274489856000 items shorter than the title. So Sue Me.
- 43252003274489856000 is the total number of possible combinations on a standard Rubik's Cube.
P.S. I think "notable trivia" is an oxymoron, but I've been wrong before.
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