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(I only posted those so the description in the link would look nice)

 

 

It is highly possible that this will be the rantiest of my posts in a while. Maybe forever. 

I personally do not believe in trigger warnings, but if its one thing I would need a trigger warning over, its fucking clickbaits. 

 

For the uninformed, clickbaits are these titles on articles and posts, that are designed for one purpose only; To make you click the link. More clicks=more money. Simple equation. Looking at GoogleTrends data on searches for Clickbait online, the word started being searched for as late as 2011. 

Okay so why is this a problem? It is just a cleaver way of earning money in the internet age? 
Well yes partially that would be true. However, the massive problem with these links are not the links themselves, but the content they link to. You see in the age of always connected, information spreads like wildfire. A clickbait is in nature very uninformative and sensational.

 

A while ago I saw a post saying "Sweden has officially moved to a 6 hour work day! Many companies have crossed over to this new way of working!". This was a video quoting an article by a third party. As a swede this whole thing sounded extremely weird. To officially move to 6 hours working day would be huge, and that has not been discussed at a governmental level in any serious way. Okay, cool lets check out the source. The source said something along the lines of "3 companies have done this." So now... we have gone from" Officially", to 3 companies. 

 

See here is the problem. What clickbaits do, is they create sensational news from content that is not sensational in any way. These links are usually easily digestable even when clicked on, BUT often ill-informed or just flat out lies. The thing is that these sites often look very much like news. That means people think they are credible, and share them on their own walls which in turn brings me to my main point: Which spreads misinformation and fearmongering. 

 

I assure you, the way Brexit was handled in the UK and the way Donald Trumps campaign has been sucessful, is all due to clickbaits in some way. These low effort posts, allow misinformation and blatant lies to be spread faster than they can be disproven. It polarizes issues that needs to be dicussed in depth, and boils them down to feelings and morals instead of logic, facts and reasoning. But in a world where clicks and likes are more important than rational thinking, Buzzfeed rules supreme. I for one welcome our new corporate overlords. 

 

Remember, when you see a post that seems too good or too bad to be true; It probably is. 
Research, think, decide.