Oh look, another one. "Hey guys, I'm just testing out spammy headlines to see how well my spammy headline posts do. If they do great I'm going to do a lot of them. But it's cool because I said it was a joke in comments. We're cool."
Woo wooo! All aboard the stop reading Neatorama train!
I'm sorry you feel this way. I've left outlets that have turned into spam factories and don't visit sites that are. Don't even click the headlines to give them the new unique to count on their metrics.
Having been an online writer through three or four cycles of "great structural upheavals" in how headlines worked, how stories were promoted, and what kind of content got produced, I can tell you that in five to ten years the cheap and easy content won't make you feel good about your body of work. I've done it, I probably helped create the monster we have now. I was a master of front paging Digg back in the day. I could crank out a buzzfeed friendly clickbait listicle in an hour that'll turn in a million hits in a day, but I don't. Digging for the hard stories, talking to actual humans about the things they do and what interests them, learning and growing and informing my readers - those are the stories I'm proud of. Those are the stories that make me keep doing what I do.
Or I could just crank out "The Ten Ways Apple's Carplay Will Change Cars Forever That Will Blow Your Mind And You'll Cry When You See The END!!!!" and sob into my beer all the way to the bank.
Don't do that, Neatorama. Don't be like Viralnova or buzzfeed or the other trashy sites that pander to the mouthbreathers on Facebook.
What the hell is wrong with a headline like "Surgeons Remove Teeth From Rare Tumor In Baby's Brain"?
Why do you have to be all clickspammy? If you walk down this dark path I won't be able to follow you down it. I'll make fun of you, I'll call you bad names, you'll join the ranks of Gawker for sites that care more about clicks than quality. Don't sell your soul to the traffic whoring Devil. Please, I have so few sites I can regularly visit without wanting to punch the screen. You're better than that.
Woo wooo! All aboard the stop reading Neatorama train!
Having been an online writer through three or four cycles of "great structural upheavals" in how headlines worked, how stories were promoted, and what kind of content got produced, I can tell you that in five to ten years the cheap and easy content won't make you feel good about your body of work. I've done it, I probably helped create the monster we have now. I was a master of front paging Digg back in the day. I could crank out a buzzfeed friendly clickbait listicle in an hour that'll turn in a million hits in a day, but I don't. Digging for the hard stories, talking to actual humans about the things they do and what interests them, learning and growing and informing my readers - those are the stories I'm proud of. Those are the stories that make me keep doing what I do.
Or I could just crank out "The Ten Ways Apple's Carplay Will Change Cars Forever That Will Blow Your Mind And You'll Cry When You See The END!!!!" and sob into my beer all the way to the bank.
What the hell is wrong with a headline like "Surgeons Remove Teeth From Rare Tumor In Baby's Brain"?
Why do you have to be all clickspammy? If you walk down this dark path I won't be able to follow you down it. I'll make fun of you, I'll call you bad names, you'll join the ranks of Gawker for sites that care more about clicks than quality. Don't sell your soul to the traffic whoring Devil. Please, I have so few sites I can regularly visit without wanting to punch the screen. You're better than that.