BY COOPER HAYES

Everyone has clicked those headlines that just seem too ridiculous to be true “7 Dogs That Will Distract You From Your Inevitable Death” or “10 Things Only Mustached Men Know to be True.” It is easy to end up deep in one of these pointless lists.

I mean it’s impossible not to, who wouldn’t want to prolong their inevitable death with puppies?

These articles appeal to readers’ need for mindlessness. We have so much stimulating us all of the time that sometimes people just need to let loose, watch something totally mindless.

The average attention span of an American has dropped from 12 minutes in 2001 to 5 seconds in 2011, according to AdWeek, which is perhaps part of why Americans can’t seem to swallow real news. Few of us want to read anything of substance. The majority of readers have probably already stopped reading this unless I write BRAD PITT NAKED or something else that would rope the reader’s attention back in.

1. The more popular these click-bait pseudo news stories become, the less “real” news-stories make it to print. Publishers notice the trends towards digital media and social media sharing which is making print obsolete, and they are smart enough to realize they need to change if they want to stay relevant and profitable.
2. Short information-less articles also shorten the attention span of readers; Cincinnati Enquirer’s Carl Weiser shared with the AP Government class in his presentation on the media’s effect on government that the Enquirer even has software that allows them to see how far the reader scrolls, so this leads to the paper’s shortening articles with the shorter scrolling of readers.
3. It leads the writers and editors to make boastful claims with the hope that the reader will click on their story, presumably looking for examples that there would be “8 unbelievably life changing shocking reasons why click bait headlines full of ludicrously excessive adjectives are ruining the world.”
4. And while I do firmly believe that there are at least 8 reasons why click-bait journalism is bad, my mind has been melted by low-quality media to the point I cannot name them.
5. It, perhaps, heralds a return to the yellow journalism of Hurst and Pulitizer’s era – everyone fighting to come up with the craziest titles they can just to attract the most readers; news becomes less of the focus.
6. Yes, I do know that I just tore up lists for being poor journalism. And yes it is an attempt at irony. I have to try to find a way to remind readers that there are more interesting things than pointless lists, real news is interesting, even if you sometimes have to dig to find it.