How Hate Clicks Make It Hard to Be Positive about Movies

What Are Hate Clicks?

Clickbait has been a thing for quite a while. However, some forms of clickbait have turned out to be much nastier than others. For proof, look no further than the use of hate clicks, which convinces people to check out something by making them feel either outraged or something similar. It shows up in a wide range of places, with an excellent example being how it has had a corrosive effect on people writing about movies.

Why Do Hate Clicks Make It Hard to Write about Movies in a Positive Way?

Essentially, the issues comes down to a matter of numbers. Websites need revenue to survive, which in turn, means that websites need clicks. These two things aren’t one and the same. However, every single click represents the potential to make more revenue. As such, the people responsible for running websites have strong incentive to increase the number of people clicking on their links using the full range of options that are available to them.

Unfortunately, hate clicks are quite effective in this regard. Generally speaking, people have been bombarded by marketing their entire lives, meaning that they are quite good are just ignoring messages. Due to this, websites need to provide some kind of strong incentive to convince them to click in spite of that reluctance. For movie websites, evoking a powerful emotion is an easy way of doing so. It is possible for them to stir up a wide range of emotions. However, there can be no doubt about the fact that outrage is one of the most convenient choices.

After all, stirring up outrage is as simple as insulting something that the writer knows that the intended audience enjoyed, which can be done within the space of a single headline. Once outraged, people will click on the article, comment on the article, and speak out about the article on social media. Much of this conversation will be negative in nature, but that matters very little because that conversation will create more conversation, thus resulting in more clicks. On top of this, it should be mentioned that there are numerous preexisting conflicts crisscrossing the cultural landscape, meaning that there are a lot of people out there who are already primed to fight. If people responsible for running movie websites are inclined towards cynicism, well, suffice to say that it is very easy for them to make these preexisting conflicts to flare up by prodding sore points.

Is There a Way to Break Out of This Trap?

Of course, it is possible for movie websites to break out of this trap. After all, not everyone reads their articles because they want to feel outraged, meaning that there is plenty of room for those who want to seek something more positive than hate clicks. For that matter, it is important to remember that being positive isn’t the same as praising everything that the writer sees. It is very much possible for writers to criticize something without deliberately going out of their way to court antagonism.

The problem is that this kind of thing takes extra effort. Our rationality steps into the background when we are riled up, meaning that it is easy to get us to do things when we are angry. As such, it seems safe to say that the struggle between positivity and the pursuit of hate clicks among movie websites will continue for the foreseeable future.

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