: Re: The art of clickbait captions We all have seen at least one of these clickbaits (or some variation thereof): "single mom discovers the meaning of life with a simple trick" or "billionaires

@Speyer920

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A common trend between your clickbait titles (and clickbait in general) is that they're promising to give you something, but only if you click in and read the article/watch the video/signup for the newsletter.

As @Cyn 's answer mentions, this "something" that they give is

Sometimes [...] about making money, achieving fame, or curing disease. But other times it's a promise of great entertainment.

In addition to these, I'd like to add a trend I've seen recently that targets "niche" groups or fandoms with clickbait like:

True Marvel fans noticed these 20 Callbacks in Endgame

The "promise" here is a reaffirmation of the users' mental images of themselves. "I think I'm a 'True Marvel fan,' how many of these did I notice?"

This is also similar to:

87% of adults can't solve this problem, while Kindergartners find it easy!

It attacks the user's mental image again. "I think I'm pretty smart, surely if a Kindergartner can solve the problem, I should find it easy."

Remember that clickbait comes in all shapes and sizes, but the goal is to dangle something the user wants juuuuuust out of their reach--until they click.

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