It may or may not
be a vile world out there, but it certainly is a viral one. The spread of information rapidly outpaces our
ability to analyze, contextualize, and respond to it. When a discussion does
take root, it is often swept away by the coming wave of The Next Big Thing.
Clickbait – the use of sensationalistic headlines to steer traffic toward vapid
or misleading Web content – has become the new paradigm for what passes for
discourse. One need only look at the painfully puerile panic over guns and
refugees to see just how much the viralization of information has contributed
to us collectively losing our damn minds.
Clickbait’s
success hinges upon its ability to grab a reader’s attention, and it often
accomplishes this by evoking the exceptional. “The one…,” “the most…,” “the
last…,” and so on all communicate the idea that what lies beyond is remarkably
different from what you have experienced before. This is undoubtedly an
effective lure, but it should theoretically have its limitations. We may be
awed by a lightning strike, but we should still have some cognizance of the
fact that it is a relatively rare occurrence.
Instead, we find
ourselves pulled into discussions of what we can do to prevent lightning from
striking us next. The exception is treated not as an exception but as an
(unsubstantiated) harbinger of a new norm. Statistically speaking, most of
America’s guns are not used to commit violent crimes, and statistically
speaking, most people of Middle Eastern descent are not terrorists by any
measure of the word. Yet rather than kowtow to this (admittedly mundane)
reality, we fixate endlessly on the improbable. What if one out of one hundred
guns sold is used to shoot up a school? What if one out of one hundred refugees
becomes a mad bomber? As long as that mere possibility exists, no matter how
remote the probability, some of us will be driven to preempt it, no matter how
great the cost.
Another salient
feature of clickbait is its reliance on oversimplification. Complexity and
nuance do not lend themselves to neat and shiny packaging. A clickbait article
may tell you that a certain substance has amazing health benefits, but it may
leave out the quantity that needs to be consumed or the duration of the regimen
needed to achieve those benefits. Similarly, we are so taken in by the “threats”
posed by gun ownership or by Syrian refugees that we overlook complexities such
as the extent to which guns are already regulated and prospective refugees are
already subject to a long and difficult process. Of course, there are loopholes
that can conceivably be exploited, but again, safeguarding against every
possibility is nigh impossible.
Though not
necessarily an intended aim, clickbait goes hand-in-hand with mass distraction.
When we read about one woman’s amazing story or one child’s heartbreaking poem,
we may be simultaneously ignoring the stories of other women and children even
as those other women and children may be more impactful. Accordingly, guns –
which are not among the top ten causes of death in America – receive a
disproportionate amount of attention relative to heart disease, the leading
cause. And those who fixate on the dangers of imported Jihadism have a tendency
to overlook the fact that domestic racists have contributed to more terrorist
violence following September 2001.
Lastly, clickbait
tends to make ideological assumptions of its audience and manipulate
accordingly. Conservative clickbait sites like Twitchy, for instance, play on
the audience’s antipathy toward President Obama by frequently name-dropping him
in headlines no matter how tenuous the connection between POTUS and the issue
at hand. Meanwhile, progressive clickbait sites like Upworthy like to spin
underdog tales and “you go”-isms even when the facts don’t exactly fit the
mold. In doing so, clickbaiters hope that merely ideological affinity will be
enough to get the message across.
So too it goes
with guns and refugees. One needn’t cast a conspiratorial gaze to see the “othering”
and ideological bell whistles that are inextricable from both issues. By
percent of households, gun ownership is highest among red states in the Deep
South and Northwest and lowest among states in the Northeast. Thus, what
masquerades as a safety issue can easily be read as an assault upon rural
sensibilities by coastal elites (ironic, given the earlier use of gun control
measures in southern jurisdictions to keep people of color from bearing arms).
Similarly, regarding refugees as enemies in waiting uses a legitimate concern
to mask naked prejudice. Were all those who fled Communist Cuba secretly Castroite
agents? Were all those who escaped the Eastern Bloc intent on establishing red
cells on American soil? Or is the fear of enemy infiltration really only a problem
now that Syrians – and Syrian Muslims, especially – are the population in
question?
Strip away the
distraction and decontextualization, and what we are left with is fear: fear of
being shot, fear of being blown up, fear of people who look, behave, or believe
differently than we do. This fear is nothing new – moral panics stretch back
across the centuries – but what is of more recent vintage is the speed at which
the wheel keeps on turning. For every hysteria that is exposed, a new one comes
to the forefront. For every exceptional happening, we are asked to accept,
absent any evidence, that it will be an exception no longer…unless something is
done. Wide-eyed, reckless calls to action, stoked by the allure of bright,
shiny informational tidbits, are unlikely to produce the intended results,
especially not without also producing unintentional consequences. With that in
mind, I would not hypocritically suggest we “do” anything about clickbait. I
would, however, humbly suggest that we take a moment to think before – and after
– we click, click, click.
