The past few weeks I keep seeing these ScreenRant clickbait articles on my Facebook feed and the headlines are always written in this weird way: Marvel's Superman Just Killed...[whoever]! And then there was one: Marvel's Justice League Killed the X-Men!
For the record, "Marvel's Superman" is referring to Hyperion who has mostly the same power set. And "Marvel's Justice League" refers to the Squadron Supreme, not the Avengers like you might think.
I finally commented that this is really dumb. Does ScreenRant just assume that its readers aren't familiar with Marvel Comics and thus need them defined in terms of DC Comics? A reply I received made sense in a crappy way:
no they assume that people will comment on their articles driving up their engagement. It’s smart but makes them look stupid as hell.
He's probably right. Phrasing it as "Marvel's Justice League" makes me go, "WTF?!" Whereas if you said, Squadron Supreme Killed the X-Men! I'd say, "Oh, OK then." It gets more attention for them, though as that person pointed out, it's the wrong kind of attention. It does make them look really dumb. Dumb and sleazy, which really doesn't make me trust or want to read articles from their site.
The other tactic at work here is keyword dumping. If you just say "Squadron Supreme" it's probably not going to get as many keyword hits as "Marvel" and "Justice League" or in the case of "Hyperion," "Marvel" and "Superman." I used to do something like this with my Eric Filler books, where after the title I'd put (Gender Swap Erotica) or (Gender Swap Age Regression) or whatever it was to help the search engines find it better. I haven't done much of that in a while; I just assume that the keywords I put in when uploading the book will do it. But the way I did it was factual, not misleading. I mean if you aren't really familiar to comics you might say, "Who the fuck is Marvel's Superman?" And then you click the article. Score another hit or "engagement" for ScreenRant!
Really though I think this is worse than the old way they probably would have done it where they'd have said, "Someone Just Killed...[whoever]!" Then you'd have to click the article to find out who it was, though often someone (sometimes me) would comment who it was to save people a click. This new way adds that extra layer of sleaze by dumping more keywords into the mix and making the author sound like either he's an idiot or he thinks you're an idiot.
Overall it just seems like a new low for an already low industry.
2 comments:
even worse is that clicking to read the article is a click for them, and any click is a win; doesn't matter if you agree of disagree with them...they got your click and you've "engaged" in their ploy. it sucks that the internet is basically just no better than the tabloid rags at the store (clickbait for senior citizens lol) but it's a strategy with a long history and it sadly will continue for a long time :(
You're right. As a more casual fan of super heroes, I might click on it only to be annoyed. Pretty sure I would realize it's click bait.
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