AFAIK, Buzzfeed and their ilk gain their "much higher traffic" by resorting to petty clickbait and other tricks to get clicks. Heck, there are many unsavoury ways to increase click/traffic:

- Slideshows that require you to click multiple times. "30 cute kittens doing amazing things you won't believe! Wow!", now you have to click 30 times to see all the pictures, instead of having just one page to scroll through. Super annoying for the reader, but a sure fire way to abuse your readers' curiosity for clicks.

- Get rid of the brief description/preview of the article and have just a picture accompanied by a clickbait headline. This will encourage more people to click on things that they normally wouldn't read. Sure, it'll piss off people who click and find that the content is not interesting, but who cares, all for the clicks!

- Porn, because sex sells. Get more traffic to your site by incorporating articles, pictures, videos that are highly suggestive, if not outright pornographic, and watch your traffic soar! "25 buildings that look like boobs? LOL!", "OMG! You won't believe what this sexy grandma does at the bank!"

I suppose if the site wants to sink to such a level to gain traffic, that's their choice. But if it were my site, I would feel so incredibly dirty.

Seconded, I am also disappointed with the use of an "Upworthy-style" headline. I used to visit various aggregate websites containing interesting pictures/links, but recently decided to ditch the ones that use "Upworthy-style" headlines, leaving just two sites: Neatorama and Bored Panda. If Neatorama continues down this slippery path, then Bored Panda will be the only site I visit for interesting things found on the web.

But to Neatorama's credit, at least I didn't have to click anything to find out what this pooch swallowed.