On the Straight Dope as well other sites around the web, you see those click bait ads.
You Know the ones that go something like: “California Drivers Would Not Believe This New Driving Law”. Or “Shocking Celebrity Deaths, #7 will Shock You”.
One is about so called presidential “mistresses”, and I while I never click on them, this one has a picture of George H.W. Bush posing for a photograph with a young woman. Doubt that she was his mistress, plus the photo is cleary old as Bush is not wheel chair ridden.
Oh another I have noticed is “Famous People You Forgot Were No Longer Straight”. The main photo is of George Michael making out with another man in the Jacuzzi.
Really? People still think George is straight after all these years.
Even ones with attractive women never convince me to click.
Semi-related but CNN.com, one of the worst for clickbait not only in the ads but also in the headlines for their own articles, ran an article about how Facebook was going to be cracking down on click bait ads because of how annoying and misleading they are. I don’t think the message made it to the top of the CNN website.
The genre I’ve seen a lot lately is “You won’t believe what (celebrity) looks like now!!”. Often, I’m told, what they look like now is “jaw dropping!!” Yeah, no.
For a while I was seeing a lot of “Why Hollywood won’t cast (so and so) anymore”. Brendan Fraser was one of the common targets. I kinda liked Brendan Fraser and was wondering where he went. Not curious enough to take my chances with click bait, though.
Oh, and I hate the “guy comes home and his wife’s new look shocks him!” Like some soldier just came home from whatever hellhole he was stuck in fighting for his life, and he’s moved to tears because his wife dropped a few pounds.
At least I haven’t seen “one simple trick!” lately. Or those asinine close ups of bizarre foodstuffs. “Eat this and never diet again!” Bleargh.
Saw one for Slate today in my Facebook feed: “Three things that happened this month show that democracy is doomed - read why.” No, I don’t know why 'cause I didn’t click.
Among the “Weird People Who Shouldn’t Exist” (with a photo of a shaved racoon or something) and “30 Celebrities You Didn’t Know Are Muslim” (hint: whoever is in the photo, isn’t) I have a warm place in my heart for the “We Tried Blue Apron, Here’s What Happened” ads hosted by Blue Apron. Golly, Blue Apron, tell me what happened when you tried Blue Apron. Did you get food poisoning? Your kids hated it and demanded chicken nuggets? You were hungry again an hour later because the portions were tiny? Or was it simply divine and wonderful? I’m just dying to know your opinion of Blue Apron after trying Blue Apron, Blue Apron.
One of the colleges I teach at has a very slow network. After I arrive at the classroom and get set up, I usually have some time before class begins, so I come here. I almost always forget that the campus computers don’t have AdBlock installed, so the SDMB takes forever to load. When it starts spinning its wheels, I’ll go “oh yeah!” and spend ten seconds installing AdBlock. Then reload the SDMB, and it’s almost instantaneous.
“How to Date Natalie Dormer” has got to be up there. Even if the clickbait can actually tell you what would attract Natalie Dormer, who would anyone who clicks on it ever expect to get within a mile of her, never mind have the opportunity to proposition her.
Oh, and there’s also one which indicates “x Clothes that Moms shouldn’t wear”, one iteration of which has a woman with what looks like a giant scorpion on her neck. Thanks, but I think I can figure out without clickbait that scorpions on one’s flesh are a bad idea.
Seriously…? Why?
I’m trying to scroll past that shit as quickly as possible without looking at it, and sure as Hell not going to click on it! [shuddder]
Apparently there are billionaire moms sharing their secret in:
Palencia, when I’m in Valladolid,
Saragossa, when I’m in southern Navarre,
Pamplona, when I’m in northern Navarre,
San Sebastián, when I’m in northern Navarre,
and Castelldefells (???) when I’m in Barcelona.
Amazing how much that chick in the picture travels. And given how many places she lives in, I guess she’s in real estate.
I clicked on two. In the first, I made it all the way to the end and then it revealed that the shocking photo in the advertisement was a photoshop. In the second, the shocking celebrity on the ad did not actually appear in the article.
The other thing that irritates me is when you have a very short article that still gets split up among 4 pages, often with page breaks in mid-sentence. Because clicking to follow the story onto the next page gives them a chance to bring up a whole new set of ads.
Just saw one: “Celebs you didn’t know passed away: #17 is shocking”. This is accompanied by a picture of a crying Lindsay Lohan. I’m fairly certain she’s still alive, in spite of her best efforts to self destruct.
Also, apparently there’s a miracle cure for tinnitus! This odd trick ends it overnight! It looks like it may involve pouring something out of a brown bottle directly into your ear. Fascinating. The last cure for tinnitus I saw online evidently made use of cotton balls and duck tape. I’m not sure how stuffing cotton balls in your ears is supposed to help. Butch can tell you as someone who has tinnitus, the last thing you want to do is block out ambient sound. That just makes the tinnitus waaaaay more noticeable.
Oh, and after earlier in this thread saying I hasn’t seen a “one weird trick” ad in a while, I naturally see one today.