Sexism: The hidden cost of clickbait

There's not much about the internet that I hate - mostly because I'm old enough to remember what it was like to replace typewriter ribbons - but I do passionately, viscerally, utterly hate clickbait. It really gets my goat. 

Seriously, how can you not be annoyed that there are people out there setting stupid little traps for you all over the internet? People who wake up every morning and go to work just to trick you into wasting more time so they can then turn around and trick some marketer into thinking they achieved greater reach or brand awareness. Thanks for nothing you miserable little online litterbugs. 

Of late, though, I've realised that there's an even bigger reason to hate clickbaiters. And it's this. Clickbait is not only a criminal waste of everyone's time, it's also often really sexist. 

Raise your hand if you've seen this:

or this:

or this:

I'm frankly surprised that there hasn't been more of a backlash against this. 
I mean it's one thing to waste people's time. It's quite another to perpetuate sexist stereotypes and objectify people the way these examples do. Am I the only one who thinks it's strange that the internet is au fait with this?

People are quick to report offensive content when they see it on TV and Print. So why is it that stories like these don't get reported online, and aren't yanked off the most commonly-visited websites?   

The next time you see one of these, please do the internet a favour. Send an email to [email protected] (replace the URL with the actual web address you see this on) and just ask them to take it down. 

Maybe clickbait is one of those things that will take a while to solve. But in the meantime I think we can at least make the internet a slightly more civil and welcoming place.