ONE SMALL SEED MAGAZINE Issue #26 Digital 01 | Page 30

Never Say To a Pregnant Woman’) and
slideshows. With the tagline ‘because all
content deserves to go viral’ and categories
such as ‘must share’, editors Jermaine
Affonso and Ben Berkley aim ‘to make
the world a better place for our content’.
Essentially, it’s a mirror to society and Internet
behaviour – a parody of a concept that’s
already ridiculous in many eyes. Just like The
Onion’s, some of ClickHole’s content might
not immediately be recognized as a joke, but
a video titled

‘WHAT THIS
ADORABLE
GIRL SAYS WILL
MELT YOUR is pretty spot on.

HEART’

Once clicked, a
cute-looking eightyear old girl explains
that the only purpose of the video is to
distract people from what they’re actually
supposed to do, and that websites will post
it with no shame to get advertising. ‘Why
would anyone spend time writing up an
800-word article when they could just put
up a video of a cute looking girl?’ she asks
viewers.
ClickHole is fun, but – since we’re all suckers
for clickbait – it doesn’t help you deal with
the disappointment felt after realising that
what you just watched didn’t make your
jaw drop or stop us from falling for it again.
Fortunately, Twitter handles such as @
SavedYouAClick and @UpworthySpoiler are
there to help us out. @SavedYouAClick’s
tagline is ‘Don't click on that. I already
did. Saving you from clickbait and adding
context since 2014’ and that’s exactly what
they do. Before you click on a headline like

IS NOT DEAD
@MILEYCYRUS

‘Despite rumours, however, she is still missing,’
they give you the answer to appease your
curiosity. In this case it was: ‘She hasn’t
tweeted in two days’.
The reason this has exploded in the last
couple of years is because news outlets are
no longer competing on newsstands but in
newsfeeds, and just about anybody with a
computer can publish. It’s harder to attract
attention to articles, content is copied and
sadly a catchy headline is more important
than a subscription. It’s the only way readers
will engage with your version of the massshared topic – which you have to post to
please your advertisers. Not all clickbait is the
same though, there are different degrees of
offenses. Some interest-arousing headings
actually lead a greater amount of people
to information they might normally not
be enticed by, yet others blatantly dupe
you into wasting your time with complete
nonsense. Nonetheless…
FACT is… good content is good content
but whether you click on it depends on – as
Steve Hind says – ‘the branding’:
Here’s an extract from an interview with
Steve Hind on NPR:
HIND: I actually got pointed to a video
that was on YouTube via Upworthy, that
was originally just called ‘Zach Wahls Talks
About His Family.’ Zach Wahls is a bloke from
the States raised by two gay moms. And
the video, which was quite a passionate
testimony from him, got a million views. It was
rebranded to be called

‘TWO LESBIANS
RAISED A BABY,
And This Is What
They Got.’ And with that headline, it got 17
million views.