Don’t do clickbait at the cost of dividing the community

You may have read the news lately about a lady feeling dehumanized by a viral TikTok video. The seemingly positive/meaningful topic or act on social media, has effectively triggered our natural responses that result in virality. However, knowing the intent behind the creators often leaves a bad taste in us, as we essentially become human clickbait.

Another common situation we all experience here is seeing content with a controversial headline, with a clear/hidden attention-grabbing intention. For example, a little while ago I saw a post called “north star metrics is a lie”, which naturally invites debates on this topic.

Our moral views shaped a big part of our identity. And how we feel about a situation based on someone’s intention and the eventual consequences influenced our judgment of an event. Would you blame someone who didn’t mean to but caused a bad outcome? Or would you blame someone who didn’t cause harm but had bad intentions?

Just to be clear, I am sharing the below thoughts because the tactic doesn’t sit well with me, but it’s not a cancel culture of a person’s character.

So why it is wrong to use clickbait?

If your aim is to be an influencer in a certain community, the growth of your personal brand shouldn’t be built at the cost of dividing the community and creating more noise.

It’s not ok when you already know the main point is flawed based on the wrong assumption, yet still continue to go with the clickbait nature. eg: in the viral video mentioned at the beginning, simply picking that lady is making a judgment on her. The more comments and likes you got, the more noises you are actually creating. Even though some of the comments have great discussions.

If your tactic is trying to tie influential people into your post by commenting, to further spread your post-exposure, It may feel good to be the center of attention and even feel justified that it draws out interesting discussions. But, think about the outcome, and typical social dynamics where we see the more controversial claims are taken out of the context and spread by themselves.

Just like building a product, when you want to scale users, you will run into some dark behaviors. Eg, for social network products, it’s typical to see trolling, scamming, and other dishonest behaviors when a product scales. And it’s the product leader’s job to minimize the negative consequences of those bad behaviors. Encouraging or even leveraging this for your short-term growth is going to hurt your acquisition, retention, and monetization eventually. In extreme cases, it could produce social harm.

So what isn’t a clickbait, or if it is but within an acceptable range?

1. You have pure intention and curiosity to draw out discussions on a topic, and you are listening to all opinions with critical thinking. The outcome is the whole community who participated in the discussion/experience gained a better understanding of this topic collectively.
2. You know it’s a cheeky title, but it won’t cause more noise or divide the community. And you can deliver value in your content to match the expectation of the clickbait, for your audience, not for you.

So what to do when you identified clickbait?

1. Put your critical hat on and decide if engaging with it will shine a light on the topic. This depends on the timing and whether your comment to course correct the topic will be surfaced on top
2. Turn your comment into your own post, or start a fresh point with your point of view. We know a lot of people only like a post and walked away without engaging in the comments. So a lot of people take the face value from the post. In a clickbait-intended post where there are already a lot of noises created. It’s best you create a new post to bring clarity to the topic from your point of view.

I am not used to calling out behaviors I feel uneasy about. I usually let it pass as I always assume the best intention behind behaviors. Especially I don’t intend for repercussions for the person who made mistakes. As everyone makes them and can learn from them. However, I am starting to learn that we all have a responsibility to shape the community experience and use our voices to spark a teachable moment and be vulnerable and courageous.

Last, here are some deep dive materials, so you don’t come to this “clickbait” article without walking away with anything valuable

1. Reforge’s user scaling topic, mentioned in the product strategy module
2. Brene Brown’s Dare to lead https://brenebrown.com/book/dare-to-lead/