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The 21st Century's Worst Media Trend (So Far)

September 14, 2016, 2:24 pm

It's not downsizing, or bias, or general shallowness (though those are all contenders).

It's the click bait top 10 list, which requires 10+ clicks to see what could be shown in a table taking about 2 column-inches of space.

Here is a particularly irritating example, as it was a topic I was interested in.  Here is a taste of the article:

To measure the states that are most attractive to Americans on the move, we developed an “attraction” ratio that measures the number of domestic in-migrants per 100 out-migrants. A state that has a rating of 100 would be perfectly balanced between those leaving and coming.

Overall, the biggest winner — both in absolute numbers and in our ranking —  is Texas. In 2014 the Lone Star State posted a remarkable 156 attraction ratio, gaining 229,000 more migrants than it lost, roughly twice as many as went to No. 3 Florida, which clocked an impressive 126.7 attraction ratio.

Most of the top gainers of domestic migrants are low-tax, low-regulation states, including No. 2 South Carolina, with an attraction ratio of 127.3, as well as No. 5 North Dakota, and No. 7 Nevada. These states generally have lower housing costs than the states losing the most migrants.

So what would you expect to see next?  A nice graphic -- a bar chart perhaps but at least a color-coded map -- showing the data for all 50 states.  But no, we can't have that.  All we get is this clicky thing -- the same technology used by web sites to show the "you won't believe what these 10 child actors look like today" results.  20+ page views to see 20% of the data.

Tags: , ,
Category: Media and the Press

6 Comments

  1. ToddF:

    You could make a case that auto-refresh is a worse trend. The Drudge Report reloads about every 10 seconds, now, followed by a self serving headline about a new record for page views.

    September 14, 2016, 3:58 pm

  2. Thane_Eichenauer:

    I imagine that irritating examples will self-eliminate over time.

    September 14, 2016, 11:43 pm

  3. John Moore:

    It inflates the number of page views. I guess some advertisers are still dumb enough to believe that page views mean something. And then there's the Drudge Report with it's frequent refreshes - I suspect it is so Drudge can always brag about having the most hits on the net.

    September 15, 2016, 9:10 pm

  4. Conqueror of All Foes Cheese:

    I hate list click throughs more than I hate Illinois Nazis. And I really, really hate Illinois Nazis.

    September 17, 2016, 2:20 pm

  6. CruisingTroll:

    I contend that there Is one thing worse than that annoying "Top 10". it's when they combine the annoying Top 10 with a click-bait and switch, more more accurately, bait that is a lie.
    The autoplay video is a definite contender, as are the over abundant reloads and the content that comes from 87 different places, so page loads take forever.

    September 28, 2016, 2:53 pm