Spoiling clickable headlines one tweet at a time
May 1, 2013, 1:42 PM | Updated: May 3, 2013, 4:03 pm
“THIS is a major cause of American’s stress,” was a cleverly crafted headline posted recently on Huffington Post. What is “THIS?” You might wonder. Typically you’d have to click into the story to find out, but someone is making things a bit easier.
“THIS = lack of sleep RT @HealthyLiving: THIS is a major cause of American’s stress http://huff.to/18evpQw,” tweeted the man behind HuffPo Spoilers.
The HuffPo Spoiler, Alex Mizrahi, says sometimes those headlines specifically designed to be “click bait” are a little annoying.
“I just sort of had the idea to let people know, saving them the time.”
Mizrahi posts the answer to the question crafted to entice you into clicking.
“Which *NSYNC member did Pink used to date?” Mizrahi tweeted the answer to that one. “Joey Fatone; 1 date.”
While he is undermining their click-bait system, Mizrahi says Huffington Post has been pretty good-natured about the whole thing.
“It’s not necessarily bad for them either. I am still sharing their links,” he says, adding people might still click through if they’re interested in the story.
When they discovered it, Huffington Post even wrote their own story about him. Growing his followers from around 18 last Thursday to 14,000 today.
He’s pleased they don’t seem upset by the whole thing.
“I am a Huffington Post fan and a Huffington Post reader,” he says. “It comes from a place of love.”
