Click Bait

Looking for ways in which the Internet can consume more of my time.

I learned a new term in the past year. No, not Brexit. Well, that too. I'm talking about "click bait." Apparently, anyone who has ever had a website desires as much traffic as possible to visit that site. We live in a world of numbers. How many Monday mornings do we wake up and learn that a movie "only" made $18 million over the weekend and is considered a bomb. I wonder what they would consider the balance in my checkbook? But I digress.

So, I'm minding my own business trying to educate myself to what's going on in the world. The news is too depressing. I find my eye drawn to an intriguing title of an article. For example: Eight foods you should not be eating. Okay, I'm hooked. And I click on the site (first mistake). Invariably, I don't even find the beginning of what I'd like to know. The headline was clear. I want to know what I should not be eating. I am consumed with fear that my diet consists entirely of those 8 things. I break out in a sweat and start to feel poorly.

But all I'm staring at is a screen that takes two hundred words to say what has just been said in the headline. At the bottom of that boring paragraph, it says, "Click here to change your life (or some such drivel of a claim)." So I click... again.

What I read now seems so obvious to me. I'm muttering to myself, "I know I shouldn't be eating that." It's at this point that a few expletives might pass my lips. But the article predicts even more dire news ahead. I'm wondering to myself if peanut butter is on the list. I mean, if I shouldn't be eating peanut butter I might as well go crawl in a hole somewhere and die.

I reach the bottom of that page and now I read, "People don't believe that the second item on our list could shorten their life by 10 years." Wow! I do a quick calculation. I'm almost 70. If it's a food I've been eating (please don't let it be peanut butter), does that mean my time is almost up?

My hand is quivering as I grip the mouse. Should I click or not?

I realize that I've already invested three page clicks, and if I follow through with their entire list I will have succumbed to their "click bait" for a total of 9 or 10 pages. I quickly exit the page, and am able to breathe again.

The following morning, I see another interesting article. This time, the title is 23 places that should be on your bucket list. OH, NO!!!

Disclaimer: Clicking on blog posts, especially named "Life's a Mystery" will not cause severe harm to your health. Just sayin'.