Why you should dislike these headlines

I noticed a change in headline styles in two recent news articles that I've been noticing on a whole lot of other sites (not just gaming related) recently. I know exactly why these sort of headlines are written that way and it makes me feel dirty and a bit repulsed. Why do I feel this strongly about headlines? Every site that I've been reading (and enjoying) that changed to this style had me running at full speed the other way. Examples are theverge.com, polygon.com, killscreendaily.com.

What exactly am i talking about?

Basically headlines that start with 'Why', 'What', 'How', 'You', 'This' or a number e.g. "6 Reasons Why You...", "14 People have been" etc.

Why is this being done?

Several reasons, one is SEO ("Search Engine Optimization") others are to make you emotional when glancing over a headline, this can be done rather efficiently by addressing you specifically and to make you click (without you even knowing what the article might be about).

I'm not a journalist, i'm a reader; therefore i can only speak as a consumer of content, however I can empathize with journalists who are forced to use these kinds of tactics. You're a young 20 something aspiring journalist living in an expensive city and you need to make money somehow, so a lot of them tend to have this writing style because it is proven to work and their bosses demand this stuff.

Giantbomb is in a different position as they have a subscription based model. So they can focus on quality over quantity and don't really need the "You must reach all eyeballs" drive as other sites do.

I realize it's just two articles but i'm so worried over this kind of stuff that i hope to make at least some change even if there is no change needed and i'm proven wrong. At least I spoke up early about it.

I have no issues with the subject matter of articles, it's just the headlines. I want to be respected at least as a reader and not be spoken at directly in headlines or just be "two of the eyeballs we want to reach".

It's sad I had to stop reading sites that were so great but succumbed to the hunger of eyeballs, I don't want Giantbomb to become one of them.

B-but isn't the thread title an example of these headlines?

Also, I feel you. I tire of seeing buzzfeed and buzzfeed-likes on my social media. Some of it is so uninspired.

EDIT: I didn't really notice so much in the cases of Patrick's article titles. I don't think they were that level of uninspired, the headlines were at least kind of relevant to the point he was making in those respective articles?

I dislike them as well. Giantbomb is less click driven than a lot of sites, so I'm a little less cynical about it but Patrick says he is trying something different this week and will collect feedback on Friday. Let him know!

Yes and it worked, see!?

@kacho_on: @patrickklepek has said on Twitter that he is trying out some different things with his news stories. I would highly suggest contacting him by e-mail, Twitter, or PM to let him know your concerns about these kinds of headlines being used recently.

Frankly, I share your disdain toward them, because I think it prioritizes clicks over the conveying of information. It's a manipulative tactic which should be beneath news. Still, I can see why Patrick might be dabbling in it just to test the waters. Hopefully we can respectfully explain how much it turns us away from taking these stories seriously so that he can continue to provide quality news here on Giant Bomb. :)

OH NO!

@kacho_on: @patrickklepek has said on Twitter that he is trying out some different things with his news stories. I would highly suggest contacting him by e-mail, Twitter, or PM to let him know your concerns about these kinds of headlines.

Frankly, I share your disdain toward them, because I think it prioritizes clicks over the conveying of information. It's a manipulative tactic which should be beneath news. Still, I can see why Patrick might be dabbling in it just to test the waters. Hopefully we can respectfully explain how much it turns us away from reading his stories so that he can continue to provide quality news here on Giant Bomb. :)

I see your point but GB has never used any intentionally misleading headlines that I can remember, that annoys me way more then using any of those words. Not to mention the subject matter is still great, until that changes I'm cool with it.

Yup i totally agree!

Perhaps you ought to ask the author of both articles.

When one of his articles shows up on Saved You A Click, we have a problem.

@kacho_on: I understand your complaint, and if @patrickklepek was really creating listicles I would be fully in your camp. However, I do want to say that I've read more articles this week than in previous ones. Often, the old style of headlines, like this told me everything I needed to know and I was content to just read that headline and wait for next week's Bombcast to hear about the actual topic. However, the new style of titles like this and this have prompted me to read the actual articles.

You're free to say what you will about the integrity of those misleading HuffPo headlines, or Buzzfeed questions which turn out to be false (IE Is this superfood capable of burning fat? Article says: no. duh.), but I think that this is just quality intrigue. My interest is piqued, so I read the article. That's pretty much what journalism is all about.

Edit: Sorry about the double post. Weird.

Wouldn't you rather the subject matter of the article get you interested than using certain words to make you click?

@quid_pro_bono: Can't he strike a happy medium of intrigue and actual information? Generally he does so by choosing and working on interesting stories. I don't know if tricking people into entering articles or hiding information from headlines is necessarily the best way to go about this. I think Patrick risks cheapening his posts by making them just like any of the endless articles we see on Buzzfeed or IGN.

Sometimes I think Patrick specifically is really good with headlines and sometimes I think he's really bad. So, hit and miss, kind of like your average human being.

A time he really nailed it was when the Titanfall release date was announced and every other site was coming out with clear clickbait headlines like "Respawn reveals Titanfall release date" and Patrick's was just "Titanfall being released on March 14th" or whatever. No bullshit, straight to the information.

And then sometimes he comes out with weird "This May Be the Miracle Baldness Cure You're Looking For" style headlines like this.

i do undertand the need of a journalist to want his\her story to be read rather than just getting the jist from the headline. the original purpose of a headline is to draw the reader in to the rest of the article. also as accurate as it can be i've grown to hate the phrase "click-bait.". just seems like another shorthand for irrational internet rage to me nowadays.

maybe it needs work but i don't see anything particularly wrong with how patrick is titling his articles, and it's not like they're suddenly bereft of worthy content.

I really don't have a problem with the piracy article title.

I'm just going to ping @patrickklepek here so he will actually see the topic and have a chance to respond if he so chooses. General Discussion and the newest topics feed can move pretty fast sometimes.

@kacho_on: I think the subject matter is interesting. What I was saying was that I would most likely hear about it on the Bombcast anyways, so I generally didn't click through. The point of journalism is to get readers to read the article, so prompting them with a question is a pretty common way of doing so. It's also common in the first few sentences of books. You have to put a question in the reader's head. I agree that if Patrick starts writing "14 reasons this Doom mod is rad" would be disappointing, but I think this is a very slight change which isn't a problem.

@truthtellah: I think that's what he's doing right now. If it doesn't progress to HuffPo levels of bullshit I think it's okay. This, right now, feels like the happy medium to me. If it regresses to "here's the entire article in the headline" like Alex tends to write (with no hate to Alex, I just think he can be verbose) I think it's counterproductive to getting hits. The blatant title was the norm in print, because the idea was to get you to buy the paper. So there was "fishing" headlines on the front page that got more blatant after you went to inner pages, as you had already purchased the paper. On the internet, it's all about getting clicks, whether we like that practice or not. Unfortunately, without people reading the stories, there is no person writing the stories. I think Patrick has gone far enough to pique interest with the headline without being annoying about it.

@quid_pro_bono

I get that writers want you to read their stuff, i just think manipulation is the wrong way to go about this. Again it's great for writers, great for readers who don't really care. Me, I care and I am screwed.

@kacho_on: On a somewhat related note, we have a rule on the forums that prohibits vague or misleading thread titles. The spirit of the rule is that people shouldn't have to click through just to find out what a topic is about. Not that I think any of the article titles are intentionally vague or misleading, just thought you may find it interesting.

Vague thread titles: The reader should be able to tell what your topic is about without clicking on it. Topics with intentionally vague or misleading titles are subject to editing or deletion.

You're screwed?

@mb: That's funny. No one (in writers world) can do that. You have to be just vague enough to get people to click and have something about the subject in it too. This article about 5 Easy Tricks to Write Catchy headlines should give you an idea.

I would like to see more opinion pieces in the Buzzfeed style around here. You can use these if you want.

• 12 Reasons Why Jeff is Wrong About Yoshi
• 8 People Who Claim to be Wizards and Why That's Fucked Up
• This Guy Wearing an Expos Hat is Making a New Windjammers Game

@dalai: Holy shit, yes. "What Celebrity Hit This Big Ass Ramp?" "Ten Toppings Not to Put On Your Durger." .10Jerks Who Like Anime."

I don't care for the headline styles either, but what probably weirds me out more is when one of the news stories today is comprised mostly of a collection of embedded tweets. I realize it's probably unfair to hold that against him, since how else would you cover the story otherwise without just being unnecessarily wordy... but perhaps therein lies the issue. If the entire news story is just a twitter conversation, and there's no easy way to cover it without literally just copy-pasting tweets into the article, maybe it's not deserving of being a news story in the first place? Like, by the standards of that article, any developer-community interaction on twitter that anyone could find even mildly interesting could then be an official news story. That road leads to Kotaku.

In short, I agree. When I'm looking through a list of related/other articles after being linked to a website and most of the titles are that style, I just close the website. If you aren't going to respect me enough as a reader to give your articles better titles, then I'm not going to respect you enough as a writer to bother clicking on your articles. I'll go somewhere else.

Here's to hoping Patrick doesn't fall down that rabbit hole. Saw on twitter that he's 'trying some new things' this week and will reevaluate for feedback on Friday. This is definitely one of the things worth bringing up.

@kacho_on: Oh I totally get what you're saying. But honestly, your issue has less to do with journalism and more to do with advertising at large and the constant battle for people's eyeballs. I used to work at a pretty big retailer here in the states, and I was often part of discussions about how to strategically lay out the store so that it would draw people in. At one point, this retailer decided to move all the in store pickup desks to the very back of the store, so you'd be forced to look at all the merchandise before you were able to get your package. It was pretty gross. I totally agree that some headlines are pretty gross tactics, but I don't think Patrick is doing that in these article names.

@marokai: I think that sentiment is still us old fogeys adjusting to the new way of the world. I still find it INCREDIBLY jarring when I see a tweet shown on screen during a local news broadcast, but, that's where the news is these days. Twitter is just a huge part of life now.

I was not particularly bothered by the titles of these articles, but those buzzfeed ones make me sick. It makes me never want to visit their site.

@dalai:

• This Italian Father Will Remind You What Real Laughter Feels Like.
  

• Dogs are Man's Best Friend, but Can They Be More? Let Rorie Explain.

• Watch as Two Men Endure Anime in Their Quest to Reach Out to the Truth.

• Think You Are a Big Wrestling Fan? Meet Dan Ryckert.

• Why One Man Refuses to Let Difficult Games Break Him.
  

• It Costs How Much?! 775 Million Reasons to Go to E3.

• How This Developer's Liver-Spotted Balls Will Change Gaming Forever.

@dalai said:

I would like to see more opinion pieces in the Buzzfeed style around here. You can use these if you want.

• 12 Reasons Why Jeff is Wrong About Yoshi
• 8 People Who Claim to be Wizards and Why That's Fucked Up
• This Guy Wearing an Expos Hat is Making a New Windjammers Game

I think that's a fantastic idea. Once in a while I'd want to have Click bait-style headlines but they are just articles about dumb shit that is pretty centered on Giant Bomb and are not misleading or overly exagerated... Okay, maybe they can be intentionally misleading so as to fool people into clicking the article but IT'S STILL FUCKING DUUUUUMB and hilarious!

For example:

"Why I Stopped Hating on Yoshi's Island and What Made Me Change My Opinion" by Jeff Gerstmann

BOOM!!! It's a Clickbait-y headline, the headline itself is an eye-opener AND it closes the book on one of GB's most heavily debated upon topics (Jeff's utter disdain for Yoshi). YOU CAN'T HELP BUT CLICK ON IT and know why Jeff finally saw the light! But then you're greeted with this...

"Haha! You clicked on the link, motherfuckers!!! You think I was ever gonna stop hating on Yoshi? Well, guess what, that shit ain't happening! I still hate Yoshi's Island!"

And he goes on to explain why HE STILL HATES Yoshi's Island.

@gaspower:

"How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Yoshi's Island" by Jeff Gerstmann

If the actual article itself was worth my time, the title itself wasn't misleading, etc., then I really have no problem with it. He did convey the subject matter of those articles anyways in those titles.

While I don't particularly like that style of headline, I haven't find any of the ones seen on Giant Bomb recently offensive. So far they haven't gone the Kotaku or Buzzfeed route where there's a statement in the headline that is proven false in the actual article.

@truthtellah: I keep clicking on the liver-spotted balls headline, but nothing happens!

Giant Bomb has always been bad at naming things... but it's traditionally an endearing badness that brazenly flies in the face of all SEO strategies. "Quick Look?" "TANG?" "Endurance Run?"

All those sound like things named by one person, off the top of their head, with no strategic overtones. From the heart, man. Realness.

Clickbait headlines... are not that.

@gaspower: @truthtellah: @sparky_buzzsaw:

• This Animal Who Met the Rider Just May Surprise You
• You Will Not Believe Who Hired This Diet Coke Addict
• 14 Other Batmans You Never Even Heard Of

This can be the start of something beautiful.

I was scrolling through my Giantbomb RSS feed (i know i'm old school) and one particular headline stood out in a positive way. John Cena Is Sad it uses humor to get you to click and is really short. It's totally unprofessional but fits the site great.

Adam Orth Is Adrift Is also great.

You Will Not Believe How Will Smith Pronounces "Executable" by Taswell

I told this robot to put the pepper grinder next to the coffee machine. You won't believe what happens next!

• Could You Love an Alpaca? This Brave Young Man Finds a Way.

• We Have All Dived or Kicked Before, but Have You Ever Divekicked?

• The Top 10 Ways Jurassic Park Inspired A Feminist Icon.

• And You Thought Starbucks Was Bad. This Guy Found FK in His Coffee.

• I Thought I Understood Naked Cartoon Pussy. Then I Found Giant Bomb.

Regardless of any of that, "Why Is Microsoft's Plan to Turn Retail Xbox Ones into Dev Kits News Today?" is one of the worst headlines I think I've ever read. It's almost aggressively, challengingly bad.

• Top 10 Shirtless Giant Bomb Moments
• 7 Secrets to Achieving That Penitentiary Body You've Always Wanted
• Tips on How to Properly <> in Everyday Situations

• He Puts the Shock Game Down His Pants. You Won't Want to Miss What Happens Next.

• 155 Reasons Casting Bufu is Always the Right Answer.

• Every New Parent Thinks Their Baby is Cool, but They've Never Met This Baby.

• "Uh uh uh uh uh." Are These the Simple Grunts of a Gamer... or a Cold-Blooded Killer?

• This Game Sold Over 100,000 Units at 10 Bucks a Pop. That's Million Bucks!

• Is Hunkadunk Really the New Funk? The RAP Man Tells All.

• Aha! Is This (Finally) Our Chance?
• 10 Things You Wouldn't Want To Find In Your Coffee
• You Won't Believe What Spell He Cast AGAIN!
• Did I Ever Tell You The Definition Of Ostensibly?
• *UPDATE* Is This The Last We'll See of Brad? New Details
• 14 Ways To Adjust To Your New Office
• You Won't Believe What Happened To This Baby!
• Wubba Dubba Dub Is That True?
• How Many McNuggets Can A Diabetic Eat?
• 8 Things You Can't Do In No Man's Sky
• Of All The Things To Flush Down A Toilet
• 13 Penitentiary Bodies Worth Doing Time With
• 13 Reasons We're Sorry For Our Last Article
• You'll Never Guess Who's Out Of A Job Today!

It's not a new thing. Newspapers did this long long long before the internet was even a thought in science fiction short stories. Ever since news became a commodity paper boys sat on street corners hailing the news article of the day, making it as sensational as possible so people would spend the penny, nickel, dime or quarter to purchase one.

Sensational headlines have been around for longer than anyone currently living has been been alive, and always will be around. If it bothers you so much stop going to the sites that do it.

I did- that's why I mention it. You are in no way mentioning it early. You didn't even exist when the concept was first invented.

The interesting irony is how you did it for your thread title. Just wanted to point that out because I enjoy irony.

@theht:

• He Sat On What? A Love Story.

• Some People Call It His Leg. But Does Max Count?

• How to Get Paid to Be Unprofessional on Fridays.

• 10 Games Better Than Brothers.

• Why Is This Man Having a Nervous Breakdown? Game Room Has the Answer.

• A Fork and a Big Gun Are All This Man Needs to Save the World.

• I Thought I Knew Competitive Gaming. Then I Met Hello Kitty.