Culture, Humor

Five [somethings] that cause [something]!

2 Comments
  1. Enough already with the “listy” titles: “Five behaviors that lead to early dementia,” or “Three foods that cause cancer,” or “Ten habits of highly effective leaders,” or “Seven policies that increase church giving,” or…
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    Back when I first read that popular blog post on “Eight ways to increase blog traffic” (or whatever it was actually titled), and it explained how people go for short, definitive lists that make everything sound simple, and how titles that hint at that kind of list really get the click traffic, I halfheartedly tried to get on board.
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    Over time, I even made some meager efforts to title some posts that way, but a quick scroll through my blog shows I was not consistent at it—yet I was never “against” it.
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    Still, come on! The “listy” titles have become so prolific and so annoying that I am now crying “uncle.” Enough. Please, bloggers and click-bait sites, get back to being creative with real titles.
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  2. And don’t even get me started on those other click bait titles such as “She was [something] until THIS happened!” Argh, ugh, and yuck. I have come to despise such things.
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  3. While I am at it, Christians and/or conservatives: can we please, for the love of all that is good and holy and decent, stop posting links to supposedly conservative articles that display, in the advertisements, “gratuitous cleavage” / wanton near nakedness and generally raunchy, nasty stuff?
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  4. And, Christians and/or conservatives: can we please stop linking (without any warning) to videos that contain seriously bad language? Yeah, that would be great.
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  5. Oh, boy. I seem to have compiled a definitive list of four items, yea five items if we count this last bit that doesn’t fit, but yet we could pretend it does. No, wait, the click-bait people do that too, whenever the 13th item in their list of 13 items is not a 13th item, but just a screen that says “you’ve reached the last item, so now click here.” Yeah, I guess I am now guilty, too.  (See what I did there?)    😉

So—whatever shall I title this post?

2 thoughts on “Five [somethings] that cause [something]!”

  1. I second all five (four?) motions! And there are so many more click bait techniques you could list. Like posting an old picture of a celebrity with a headline that reads “What [celebrity name] looks like now is insane.” They create these techniques, use them to death, and then create the next one. Let’s take back the Internet. Blogging started out being about the sharing of ideas, and often included lengthy, in-depth articles. Now blogging is mostly about marketing, and effective marketing is geared to people with short attention spans. So pictures are better than text, and video is better than pictures. If you must have text, settle for a list of bulleted points. So much posting, and so little that matters. I bet we forget 98% of what we see online within an hour of having seen it. For more on this problem click here….

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