“The funny thing about clickbait as an idea is it's basically shorthand for: People really wanted to read this. Writing a really juicy headline to get people to read it, whether you got the substance or not, is not new to BuzzFeed and Upworthy. Is that gaming the algorithm? Was the algorithm of the penny newspaper — 'You can see the front page on the shelf, and you can't see the content in it, so those words better be big and gripping and delicious'? Is that gaming the algorithm for how newspapers were sold? Or is that just trying to get people to read your paper?”
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