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I have a confession to make: the initial subject line for this email was “You will be SHOCKED at how easy it was to get you to open this email”. I thought it was fun, relevant, and, of course, more enticing.

A sprinkle of mystery, a dash of FOMO, a pinch of OMG, I must know the secret, and voilà, your sensationalist clickbait is ready to serve.

I changed it because I didn’t want to reduce an important concept to the bare emotional draw, not because it wouldn’t have worked.

It would have worked like a charm. Unfortunately.

Everyone hates clickbait & sensationalism. Everyone engages with it

​This 2018 Facebook Note by Mark Zuckerberg says it best:

“One of the biggest issues social networks face is that, when left unchecked, people will engage disproportionately with more sensationalist and provocative content. This is not a new phenomenon. It is widespread on cable news today and has been a staple of tabloids for more than a century. At scale, it can undermine the quality of public discourse and lead to polarization. In our case, it can also degrade the quality of our services. [emphasis mine]

Our research suggests that no matter where we draw the lines for what is allowed, as a piece of content gets close to that line, people will engage with it more on average — even when they tell us afterwards they don’t like the content. [emphasis mine]

By making the distribution curve look like the graph below where distribution declines as content gets more sensational, people are disincentivized from creating provocative content that is as close to the line as possible.

“Content [that] gets close to that line” doesn’t refer to quality but to sensationalism. Despite this 2018 initiative, sensationalist content still thrives on Facebook, as it does on any other social media platform.

It’s endearing that they thought they could quench humans’ thirst for sensationalism. It’s been there for as long as we can remember — we can trace it back to The Roman Empire.

Psst, my subscribers read this before you did. Want to be the first to see analyses and roadmaps like this one? Subscribe to Ideas to Power Your Future and get them in your inbox every Thursday.

Closer to our days, check out this New York World front page.

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The newspaper was led by Joseph Pulitzer himself. If the Pulitzer Prize is now a testament to equidistant, quality journalism, back in the 20th century, all the headlines on the front page are sensationalist. Note the strong words and expressions: “smash”, “utter rout”, “completely destroyed”.

Everything is unequivocal and enticing — the two core features of sensationalism and clickbait. The strong words get you to read everything — you must know what happened there, how three Spanish cruisers can be completely destroyed.

This isn’t even the worst part of sensationalism. This is:

Sensationalism destroys media literacy

These one-sided, half-baked, half-true, pompous, and arrogant statements give us the comforting feeling of being in the know. We know everything and it was easy to learn it: just click here and get the full scoop.

Media, on the other hand, was never supposed to be the distributor of unequivocal truths. It was designed to give you facts that you then chew on so you can form your own opinions about things.

Sensationalist approaches kill media literacy. They give us pre-formed, pre-chewed opinions that we can now claim ownership over.

Critical thinking is hard, so why not outsource it to “thought leaders”?

What about marketing, you ask?

While no one expects marketing content to be bias-free and strictly factual, marketing clickbait is even more dangerous. Great “hooks” followed by content that fails to deliver on the promise are the reasons why:

1. Everyone hates marketers
2. Because we kinda destroyed the internet with extra-fluff, zero-substance SEO pieces.

Can we do better and still create profitable content?

Marketing “extremism” is a recipe for (short-lived?) success

To thrive, your content needs to toe the lines, to flirt with account suspension (on social media) and with breaking societal/moral norms everywhere.

• Contrarian takes
• Absurd claims (10x your revenue in 10 days working 10 mins per day)
• Xenophobia, sexism, racism, and all the other nasty -isms
• Downright rudeness
• Patterns that “stop the scroll” because they are outrageous or wildly different

— all of these are things that get people to click and yes, buy too.

It’s the perfect vicious circle, a form of circle-jerking that, knowingly or not, we perpetuate every day, especially in the creator economy.

There’s another way to thrive online: replace sensationalism with exceptionally good writing.

The only problem?

It’s infinitely easier to constantly churn clickbait and sensationalism than to constantly write exceptionally well.

Successful publishers and content creators know this. Here’s what else they know:

Sensationalism and clickbait work because they play on strong psychological triggers

Humans are wired to look for information because it has survival value. Knowing that a lion is dangerous will help you stay out of its way. In business, knowing how to “become insanely successful by working two hours per day” ensures not just survival but thriving.

When we see clickbait, a dopamine pathway is activated. Along with it comes an itch to know, to understand, to be in the loop.

It’s a negative reinforcement of sorts: we don’t get pleasure by knowing, but by scratching that annoying itch. Dopamine is released the second we click on the link, irrespective of how good or bad the information inside is.

Dopamine is not about pleasure, it’s about the anticipation of pleasure.

Essentially, clickbait is intellectual foreplay.

I hate that this is true with the fiery passion of a Shakespearean drama. Do you?

Remember my confession at the beginning of this email? Yes, I hear the siren song of clickbait quite often.

Writing and thinking are my favorite pastime activities, which is precisely why I started this newsletter. To write on my terms, to write what I deem exceptionally good content. You may disagree with me on the exceptional part, but this is about my own respect for my craft. Exceptionally good writing is first and foremost good thinking.

As long as I feel like I’ve provided a nuanced enough take and made you think, I’m happy.

Still, I know that a bit of sensationalism would make this newsletter far more popular and I’m not above wanting that.

Which led me to wonder: could I use clickbait for good?

Is there a good, ethical way to use sensationalism?

I found one study that says you can: sensationalist news reports that exploit the audience’s pain and trigger unwarranted strong emotions are a mirror of societal norms. The author also argues that they can also be useful reminders of the perils surrounding you.

If a child is abducted in your neighborhood, the appeal to emotions will make you more wary of the perils your children might face, for instance.

While that may be true, the incessant appeal to negative emotions in mainstream media triggers anxiety and depression.

It’s not just about the news, either. B2B content is brimming with survivorship bias, making us think that we’re the only losers who couldn’t build a 7-figure business in one year or less.

What if your content delivers on the promise, though, you ask?

What if, like me, you’ve also assigned yourself the herculean task of trying to create great content, focusing on quality rather than clickbait? Couldn’t you add a sprinkle of sensationalism to attract just enough eyeballs to get the ball rolling?

How to use sensationalism ethically — the dose makes the poison

Before you post a clickbait-y headline, hook, subject line, ask yourself this: is that click worth trading your credibility for?

​Credibility takes a long time to build but a second to lose. It’s very easy to get people to click once. Getting them to click twice is an entirely different matter.

What if your content can deliver, though? What if it’s truly sensational?

It would be a shame to get fewer eyeballs on it just because you didn’t want to resort to emotions. So here are a few litmus tests you can run before you write that headline:

• “You won’t believe what happened!” Is it truly a surprising story? Did a cat wed a raccoon?
• “Hot take: […]”. Is it, though, or have you already seen it in another dozen social media posts?
• “How to 10x your business overnight”. Post it confidently if you have the case studies and testimonials to prove you’ve 10x-ed at least of couple of businesses so far.
• “This one trick will get you 46,890 followers in two days.” Again, if you have proof or a study to back it up, go for it. I use “increase your chances of success by 414%” on my Guided Strategy Template page because there’s research to support this claim.

The trouble with clickbait is that it’s usually bait and switch: you click hoping to find something interesting but you end up immersed in a long ad, with no proof to substantiate its claims.

If you can substantiate those claims, go for it! Get the eyeballs your content deserves!

One last thing: it would be hypocrytical of me to say I never amplified emotions in my content. This is marketing — we all do it or we starve.

However, carefully toeing the line between clickbait and marketing lingo is what separates sleaziness from good marketing and copy. As elusive as it may be, balance is key — always.

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Adriana’s Picks

1. Meta introduces ad-free, paid tier in the EU.
2. The US economy is growing (it’s consumption-fueled, so it may not last) but 62% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.
3. LinkedIn has just surpassed 1 billion users and it celebrates with new AI features.

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That’s it from me today!

See you next week!

Here to make you think,

Adriana

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