Clickbait
A title or thumbnail engineered to maximize clicks by overpromising, withholding, or exaggerating what the content actually delivers. The defining feature is the gap between what the headline implies and what the body provides.
Clickbait is the broadest of the sub-tags, the umbrella under which the more specific mechanisms shelter. Its signature is a gap — between what the title promises and what the content delivers, or between how much it implies and how little it says. "You won't believe what happened next" is the pure form: maximum implication, zero information.
The engine underneath is curiosity treated as an itch. Loewenstein's information-gap theory describes curiosity as the discomfort of a perceived hole in what you know — open the gap, and the mind wants it closed (Psychological Bulletin, 1994). A clickbait headline manufactures that hole on purpose, then offers the click as the only way to fill it.
I'll steelman it briefly, because the line is real but not absolute. Every good headline is, in some sense, a promise that the piece is worth your time — persuasion isn't manipulation by definition. Clickbait is the version where the promise is the whole product and the payoff never arrives, or arrives shrunken.
The tell is retrospective and reliable: did the content earn the title, or did the title spend trust the content couldn't repay? When you finish feeling slightly cheated, you've just been clickbaited — and noticing the feeling is how you stop rewarding it.
Also known as
Bait Headline · Linkbait