If it's used all the time, it must be easy for you to provide a few examples. I've seen a few cases where a post title used profanity in a way that's arguably unnecessary, but I can't think of any examples of outright linkbaiting.
No, I mean the specific examples that prompted you to make the comment I was responding to. You wouldn't make such a broad claim without at least one or two examples, would you?
Suffice it to say that any of the examples you find in those search results are examples of "fuck" being used as link bait.
Even the submissions with "fuck you money" in the title since that is a linkbait-y term unto itself. I am of the opinion that unless you're discussing the word 'fuck' there is almost no possible reason to use it in a title unless it's to attract clicks and votes by eliciting an emotional response.
I think that's debatable. I don't see anything blatantly wrong with any of those, but I could see how someone might find titles like that inappropriate. I personally don't have a problem with it.
Whether it is or isn't appropriate is the topic of a separate discussion altogether. That would have to touch upon personal and community etiquette, professionalism, audience, and so forth.
I'm purely focused on the link-bait aspect. Using swear words in a title is in a way like gaming the attention economy by subconsciously tricking peoples' minds into thinking that a piece of content "grabs" them on some level, even before seeing that content.
What I would be interested to know is if there is data that shows that people up-vote those articles -- before reading them -- disproportionately more often than articles with no swear words in the title.
On the contrary, it's unreasonable to make a broad claim based on one or two examples. When people say "I keep seeing people do this," it's based on a memory of repeatedly seeing similar things, not any one specific example they have in mind. Similarly, I noticed today that a lot of people around here have silver cars, but I couldn't name for you any specific silver car I saw on my commute today.
Well sure. But at the same time, it would be setting a bit too high a standard for me to expect people to do a scientific study for every silly little comment they leave on HN, don't you think? If someone claims that something happens "all the time", don't you think it's reasonable to expect that person to have observed it at least once or twice recently? Or at least be able to provide a reason why they don't have one or two examples?
My point is that there's a difference between passively observing something multiple times and remembering precise secondary details about the instances when you observed the thing. I remember seeing lots of silver cars quite well, but I don't remember any specific details about the cars — and remembering the make and model of a car is a lot easier than remembering the URL of a Hacker News posting.
At any rate, I just don't see why it would be useful for him to have specific examples in mind. What is the point in asking for that?
> I've seen a few cases where a post title used profanity in a way that's arguably unnecessary
I think that's pretty much what he means, but you can't blame the author since it seems to work. People here are passionate, especially when it comes to articles related to the human side of software development. Profanity can tap into that emotion fairly well.
Ahh, so you were. For some reason I got the impression that you were justifying the use of swearing because of the response it generates while not making the connection between that and outright baiting.
But is it really any different than 'sex sells'?