HUFFPOST usually has a political top story with a related photo. This morning they had a story with a photo that was both unusual and could easily be called clickbait. Fish. Bait. Get it?
This is the actual story:
Why Is Fish Sex So Hot Right Now? An Investigation. Melissa Broder’s “The Pisces,” like “The Shape of Water,” offers romantic possibility to straight women who feel ready to give up on men. By Chris Fallon
Update: The top story has been replaced this one on HUFFPOST. I just wanted to memorialize the Wet Dreams header here.
.
I admit I am guilty of trying to craft my own titles to both convey the subject and pique the interest of Daily Kos readers. I try to select an image which will convey something specific about the topic, more than just that it is about Trump with his photo for example. The thumbnail on the main page can be made to stand out in the long column of some 50 recent stories which appear under the Community Spotlight, Recommended List, and Most Shared stories.
.
I wrote about Sarah Sanders twice in five days with very different responses.
.
Here’s the image I made for yesterday instead of just using a photo of her. I wanted it to be readable as a thumbnail.
Is it clickbait? I have to admit that I hoped my wordplay, “sigh-cology of Sarah” and “Sarah Sanders Sideshow" was clever enough to attract lots of readers.
How about this from April 29th? It got many more readers than the Sarah Sanders story from yesterday.
Here are some of our other go-to websites this morning:
Daily Kos has decided that their readers know how to scroll down to read the primary articles, most of them written by staffers like Mark Sumner, Laura Clawson, Mark Lazzaro, aka Hunter, Kerry Eleveld, Joan McCarter, and other less frequent contributors. (List of Kosstaff here.)
All the other sites I am familiar with utilize similar formats with several or numerous articles on the opening page. The websites use lots of images while the newspaper sites like the NYT and WaPo don't, and they refrain from clickbait hearers.
Apropos, considering that the NRA convention in the news today, here’s a HUFFPOST top story from March (with my added comment upper left):
How do you decide what you click on?