Wednesday, September 15, 2021

What Is The Latest Trend In Lame Clickbait Articles?

A couple months ago I talked about how lame clickbait sites like ScreenRant would try to get people to see their articles by stuffing the headlines with goofy phrases like "Marvel's Superman" instead of "Hyperion" and "Marvel's Justice League" instead of "Squadron Supreme."  I think that story ended, so now they have to find a new trick.

In the last month they've been posting a bunch of headlines that say, "The MCU Did...something" or something else relating to "The MCU."  Just one problem:  these articles all relate to the Disney+ series, What If...? which tells half-hour-ish alternate history stories like, "What If Peggy Carter took the super soldier formula instead of Steve Rogers?"

When they started to do this, people like me said, this show is NOT "the MCU" and some fanboy would say, "They" (whoever "they" is) said it is.  Which, OK, technically these stories are offshoots of the MCU continuity, so they are tangentially "the MCU" but the way ScreenRant phrases these headlines is like they're talking about the actual continuity of the movies and recent live action TV shows.  That way when people search for "The MCU" they might click on these stupid things that don't actually relate to the MCU.

This article was an especially lame clickbait article.  The MCU Just Made Bucky's Winter Soldier Story Darker!  Except if you actually read the lame article you realize "the MCU" did nothing at all.  It's just this asshat speculating that in episode 3 of What If...? the Winter Soldier killed Hope van Dyne when she became an agent of SHIELD.  But there's absolutely no proof of this.  There's nothing shown or said to corroborate this.  It's pure speculation by the author with a headline designed to entice people. 

Like "Marvel's Superman" shit it's designed to entice gullible people but also people like me who are like, WTF?  Because a click is a click, right?  It's all pretty sad that people do this.  Maybe I shouldn't throw stones considering the stories I write for money but I don't call my stories, "Marvel's Superman" or say "The MCU Just Gender Swapped A Hero!" so people might read them.  Maybe I should try that.  The MCU Just Gender Swapped Marvel's Superman!  Probably get a ton of sales--until the book gets pulled for violating copyrights.

1 comment:

Cindy said...

People would for sure click on a MCU gender swapped Hero. Too funny, but yeah, you can't really do it. There is all kinds of click bait out there, and it's just so eye rolling.

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