A Blog by Cody Walker

A Slow 30° Incline Into Insanity.

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Clickbait

If there's one thing that's destroying western civilization, it's ether a new rise in extreme political views, a lack of drive-thru Panda Expresses, or clickbait articles.


Or climate change, whatever Bill.

Personally I'm leaning towards the second option, but this about the third one and not the first two, hence the title.

So clickbait for those not in the know are a new fad of getting easy online revenue by buying ad space on popular websites and then posting A HEADLINE THAT IS THE BIGGEST GREATEST DISCOVERY OF MANKIND IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD AND YOU MUST CLICK NOW TO LEARN WHAT IT IS WHILE IGNORING THE FACT THAT ANY OTER NEWS OUTLET EXPECT FOR THIS WEBSITE YOU HAVE NEVER HEARD OF HAS NOT REPORTED ON IT AT ALL. 

Did the grammar seem a little off? Doesn't matter, your clicks matter. 

For example.

Depends on your body

Wasn't about a currency law.

Just plain bullshit

That's a photoshop.

That's just weird.

You know kids see these websites right?

Yeah it's called eating pure protein and doing nothing expect weight training.

It's called "exercise on a regular basis"

I doubt that it would involve throwing her over your shoulder and walking off with her.

You may be noticing a few trends

Yes, mostly they're about 1.) Some new bullshit food you can eat 2.) Some new bullshit exercise you can try 3.) Some new bullshit law that you have to learn about or 4.) How to get your ex back 

In "researching" this "article" (I would consider this blog and my habit of writing poorly written borderline insane rants on it as being of a more reputable source than the average clickbait website, therefore I shall compromise and use elevating adjectives in quotations) I chose to ignore the average run of the mill "how to fix your body and your problems" baits and instead go for the more interesting lures of something truly weird and out there. 
I'm a classy-ass fish.

So I then stumbled upon this little nugget.
hmmm.

Now this stuck me as interesting. Because never have a I really considered the financial techniques discussed in the Bible. I was always too busy looking into how half of it was stories of loving your neighbors and treating everyone equally and making the world a better place, and how the other half is just fucking weird. 

That is a quote from the King James Bible saying that women must bring their local priest two turtles on the eighth day after their period to be considered a part of the community again. 

So anyway my interest was piqued. I clicked the article, and for what happened next the only way to describe it is in the form of the illustration of an old Chinese tale about how old ideas conflict with new teachings in a way that may seem foolish at first, but you can come to realize the simplicity of the old ways may in fact be beautiful in their own perceptions.

It's "turtles all the way down" is what I'm alluding to.

First I was introduced to a relatively clean website with this headline. 

I know right?

As the story goes, a guy who talks about finances on Fox Business report and such bought a bunch of Best Buy stock when it was on the low end, and made a bunch of money when it went back up. Like how every piece of stock as ever done in the history of capital trading. 
Granted I'm no expert but those lines are showing something.

Purportedly the hot stock tip came from King Solomon himself, but the article isn't ready to give up the secret yet as to how to judge the ups and downs of the stock market and buy risky stocks only for them to serendipitously pay off when you have millions of dollars to play with in the first place.

But Sean here needs some street cred, he ain't no high end country club owner, he's a poor-ass middle-class American like the rest of us. Because he was only making $15,000 a year, and now he's making so much money he can give away $50,000 a year!

See! The words say it! Therefore it is true!


Anyway, short little side-note here. $15,000 is barely livable, if you're a single adult. So apparently this full grown man, who I'm assuming has a family, managed to find some extra cash to start playing the stock market, and is now giving away $50,000 a year? 

Which is probably more than O'Trumpette gives.

Ok I guess it's all about perspective. 

Continuing on, nothing in the article explains what the biblical secret is. But as you continue on it explains a blueprint of sorts that will, if you buy this limited offer, start making you money as the same day as purchasing. I guess if you wait until midnight you get a full 24 hours. I don't know it wasn't fully explained. So then we come to the video. Oh dear, the video. It begins as such.

"I'm counting this as my community service hours"

The video begins with a three-minute long monologue from a guy who needs to learn how to match the color of his shirt to the rest of his shirt. Honestly I really don't know where you can get a shirt like that. It's like his head is superimposed onto someone else's body and the director of visual effects forgot to make sure the wardrobe matched and the the SFX guys where too lazy for a post-production color match.

The three-minutes of talking head syndrome consists of the guy reading the entirety of the article you just read as an introduction to the video you are about to watch. 

At this point we have read an introduction to an introduction to the introduction. But it gets much worse. The man of the hour then begins speaking.

And all his cheap default fonty goodness

He then begins speaking for five more fucking minutes about his secret. In which he restates all of the "facts" already in the article, and the video intro, and his own intro to his intro, not once, not twice, but fucking three more times. 

I have now read the article, and have watched 8 minutes of video in which I have been told the same information half a fucking dozen times. 

So eventually he introduces his money making secret. In that it's still a secret and he's only introducing, by once again, telling us how he was making 15K and year and how he's giving away 50K a year.

He does this by presenting the idea of love of money, and money, and how it's only a tool and how men corrupt or something, I just, I can't.

Honestly the whole "Do guns kill people or people kill people" debate makes me want to put a gun in my mouth less than the the video did.

Here's a few screen caps from his narrated PowerPoint, for full effect, read "This is how I had gone from making $15,000 a year to giving a way $50,000 a year" Since by this point I had lost track of how many time he had said that.







Anyway, now 15 minutes in, my brain had become numb as he continuously teased me by saying that he will soon be discussing the biblical secret to go from making $15,000 a year to giving a way $50,000 a year. 

But what Sean Hyman didn't know was that I'm a film student, and if there's one thing I'm good at, it's figuring out where a movie is going, and his poorly executed story of financial gain was about to become undone. 

I realized that what he was trying to explain all a long, was to study to company you're buying stocks in and make informed decisions while choosing what company to buy stock in. You see King Solomon discussed how you must find the value in your money, and according to Paul you must learn not to love your money. 

See where I'm going with this? No? Well let me tell you how I went from making $15,000 a year to now giving away $50,000 a year. You see I made my father's $40,000 retirement plan into $396,000, and if that doesn't show that the secret that I discovered works, than I don't know what will. Other than the fact that I went from making $15,000 a year to now giving a way $50,000 a year. And you see....

"Your financial tips and anecdotal stories shall become a part of our collective, you shall become US, resistance to the IRS is FUTILE"

Moving on, let's get a quick brainwash from that madness.

Spoilers: the animal in the picture isn't real, nor in the article.

Funny thing about that one is that it lists botflies as one of the animals on the list, and apparently this ruffled some feathers in the comment section. 

Truly a hero for the ages.

Then there's just the weird stuff. 

Yeah uh, his vision is the least of his problems.
From the picture listed, I'd say I'm good.

I think you're missing a noun.

It's called the MVD here in Surprise, so pass.

Well they failed that.


If you do read some of these articles. And I really, really recommend that you don't, you may notice a trend. They're all written so that they say a lot (as in a lot of words) without saying anything. It's just paragraphs upon paragraphs of just restating the same thing over and over without any point, and some how it always ends up with a link to another website with the same content, yet written differently. 
Touché

I know there's a musical term for a looping crescendo that sounds like it is rising in volume or pitch but not actually rising but looping, (for example Turn Down for What right before the bass drop), but I can't seem to find the proper term, so instead, in layman's terms, reading Clickbait articles is like being that dog from the opening of Mulan. 

You know the one.

I guess what my frustration comes from is that there's people out there who writes the articles, and are paid some amount of money to do so, and I think I might be a little jealous of that, and two, that it's a sustainable source of income for the businesses running them, which means that people are clicking on them enough to generate ad revenue. 

And I honestly don't know what kind of people would do that. 

Other than me for the purpose of writing this. 

Ohhh those kinds of people. 

Ohh I'm now understanding who's in this demographic now. 

Yep, the internet will never be the same. Mainly because this is the last season of Parks and Recreation 


Please tell me...




















    

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