Clickbait - the art of combing an interesting bit of art with a catchy headline in the hopes of tricking the curious into heading over to some kind of an bloated content farm. Whether or not you acknowledge the crafting of clickbait as an art form in and of itself, clearly some effort is required to craft the perfect combination of grabby pic and tantalizing topic sentence. So if there are craftspeople out there, working day and night to craft clickbait, how do things like this happen?
What did the writer/artist/craftsperson think they were doing? What do they imagine that brackets mean?
I can tell them what they actually mean - they connote an aside/explanatory note/clarification designed to reveal a piece of information to the reader without needlessly complicating the sentence. In this case, however, the brackets exist only to negate the entire point of the sentence. If you were reading this title aloud, you would leave out any bracketed word, and wind up with the phrase '15 of the most family photos ever'.
Does 'most family' work as a description? Has anyone ever said 'That's the most family photo I've ever seen?'
I don't think so.
Take out the brackets, and you've got a clear sentence describing the series of pages designed to serve up the largest number of ads in the tiniest number of clicks possible. So why were they included?
Perhaps paying non-English speaking people minimum wage isn't the best way of generating tempting internet content?
What did the writer/artist/craftsperson think they were doing? What do they imagine that brackets mean?
I can tell them what they actually mean - they connote an aside/explanatory note/clarification designed to reveal a piece of information to the reader without needlessly complicating the sentence. In this case, however, the brackets exist only to negate the entire point of the sentence. If you were reading this title aloud, you would leave out any bracketed word, and wind up with the phrase '15 of the most family photos ever'.
Does 'most family' work as a description? Has anyone ever said 'That's the most family photo I've ever seen?'
I don't think so.
Take out the brackets, and you've got a clear sentence describing the series of pages designed to serve up the largest number of ads in the tiniest number of clicks possible. So why were they included?
Perhaps paying non-English speaking people minimum wage isn't the best way of generating tempting internet content?
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