What makes a clickbait, clickbait.

Yes, I am trying to lure you in, or not it’s up to you to decide whether you want to find out what I have for you inside this article or frantically scroll away without unveiling what you could have known.

Well since you have opened it and are eager to find out what I have in store for you let me first tell you that it’s not clickbait, or it probably is, I will leave that for you to decide once you have gone through it all.

So why did you visit this article even when it was clearly stated that it is clickbait well to say it in one word your reason for that is human curiosity we humans are curious beings and also pretty gullible.

But that's not the only reason you visited this article the other reason for the same is due to a phenomenon that our brain is easily able to deduce irregularities or disorder in a seemingly ordered pattern and hence even though we adore symmetry we are able to easily identify imperfections in the midst of perfection.

So, what does this have to do with anything with you getting reeled into this article? well, let's assume you have been scrolling through the medium page trying to find out something new and exciting to read or let's say you have still not purchased the premium so you are cautious to carefully select the limited number of articles that you could read among a list of articles, every time you scroll down, due to the beautifully aligned and arranged website of medium every article seems to appear the same with a carefully thought of heading optimized for an amazing SEO rating, a beautiful picture you probably have seen somewhere else since they are all from Unsplash,(ahem due to copyright), or various articles on the same ongoing blooming topic.

This organized structure adds an overall symmetry to the site dynamics and seems pleasing to the site visitors/readers, and it is among this type of symmetric wonders imperfection tends to shine, imagine if medium allowed me to put an emoji as the heading of this article and I being a vexatious creature, put an absurd emoji, you will not be able to scroll away without thinking about what in the world is that in the middle of important articles about politics and science. Well, that how we are that's why a symmetric face seems beautiful and as the symmetry tends to reach perfection even minute imperfections are abhorrently visible.

Another aspect of clickbait lies in the fact that once you have seen it you can't ignore it, once your eyes are immersively observing every aspect of the material in front of the screen and you spot the odd one out, the curiosity kicks in and you are inclined to let's say magnetized towards the content that it holds simply because you are just sick of going through the same kind of articles again and again just like one’s mundane life and a weird day or symbolically a weird article catches your eye and you just can't seem to ignore it whatsoever. You need it you need that imperfection in life simply because it makes the entire content complete and goes with the nature that we humans possess as we simply are not supposed to be perfect, and that’s why click baits my friend, they work.