[briandear]

So the clickbait was actually providing the payoff it promised? The article was good, so you aren't going to post it because its title was too catchy? "Clickbait" is when you get suckered into clicking bad content via a catchy headline. It isn't clickbait when it's actually a good article that "delivers" on the headline's promise.

[codetrotter]

It’s a clickbait type of title because it doesn’t convey a good reason to read the article on its own — it’s enticing you to click in order to find out whether the article is of interest or not.

HN non-clickbait title:

> Evidence that pop music is getting sadder and angrier

Original clickbait title:

> Is pop music really getting sadder and angrier?

It needlessly formulated the title as a question to intrigue people to click it.

Writing the titles in this way serves no purpose but to waste people’s time by tricking them to click through.

I refuse to partake in the further proliferation of any article that practices this style of writing titles.

Clickbait titles need to die. The only chance we have of getting rid of them is to not give them traffic. That won’t ever happen of course, but at least we have the useful policy here on HN to shield us from being manipulated by the titles when we decide what we want to read and not.