BuzzFeed has the hottest, most social content on the web. They feature breaking buzz and the kinds of things that make you want to jump into oncoming traffic.
The site has infected my Facebook and Twitter feeds with what is colloquially known as clickbait.
Clickbait, as defined by Urban Dictionary, is “an eye catching link on a website which encourages people to read on. It is often paid for by the advertiser (‘Paid’ clickbait) or generates income based on the number of clicks.”
BuzzFeed uses the eye-catching link technique to generate income off of page views. Essentially, BuzzFeed makes money every time someone clicks on a link to their website.
BuzzFeed has attention grabbing headlines down to an art, which in turn generates high page views. Some fun headlines I have spotted on BuzzFeed recently: “24 Reasons Childhood Friends Are The Best Friends,” “This Photo Of Bill Nye Taking A Selfie With A Fan Is Adorable,” and “13 People Who Don’t Get How Lucky They Are To Be Meeting A Sloth.”
Chances are you’d be tempted to click on at least one of these.
I have no problem with people using their time to relax and look at silly pictures on the Internet but BuzzFeed’s brand is invasive and lacks any real creativity. It is built around the idea of sharing, but shoves time wasting poppycock in the face of everyone else.
From my perspective, the point of social networks like Facebook is to keep in touch with friends, share events, and make plans. It functions as a social hub for planning a lot of what I do and lets me learn about the awesome stuff happening in Ottawa or on campus.
Throughout the mess of status updates, pictures, and news articles are BuzzFeed links. I have hidden them on my desktop but if I’m sitting on the bus, or checking my phone between classes I see a new BuzzFeed post every single time.
Why are you sharing “Reasons Why Potatoes Are The Most Perfect Food?” For those of you that have been spared, the list contains a variety of potatoes in a variety of food dishes.
While it isn’t entirely BuzzFeed’s fault that someone on my friends chose to post this article, they do encourage it. BuzzFeed’s money comes from people’s friends sharing a link. It is viral marketing and it is smart as hell.
I’m pissed because the images are all lifted from Tumblr and Google image search. These all make money based on images taken, hosted, and tagged by other people. There is nothing original about BuzzFeed’s content. They create a skeletal structure to contextualize a series of images. They do not source it back to the creator of the image, only the URL where they were found.
Worse are lists that highlight moments from TV series, movies, or decades. These lists ride on the coattails of nostalgia and the jokes, memories, and ideas fostered by others entirely.
Tumblr uses a similar business model to profit but it allows you to create, reflect, and foster an identity. So if Tumblr is a scrapbook, BuzzFeed is a billboard. It spits familiar images back at you and forces you to pay attention even if you actively try to avoid it. It offers minimal emotional impact through memories created by others. BuzzFeed brings nothing to the table.
Clickbait websites provide a quick distraction that seeks you out. It is invasive, vapid, and exploitative. It robs you of your time, content creators of their money, and puts the focus on quantity not quality of articles.
It wastes writers’ time by having them pump out as many bylines and connecting phrases as possible.
These are people with opinions, ideas and experience who are stuck writing “Your love for cheese is hypnotic.” Someone was paid almost no money to write that and 30 other equally banal headlines that only ‘90s kids will understand.
