Opus 2024-370: The Measure of Success

If they keep doing it, it must be because it works.  If it works, it must be because we keep falling for it.

I speak of Clickbait.  Even worse than Clickbait is the dangling promise that is never fulfilled.  There are many headlines that look interesting.  On occasion I will fall for it.  Click.  Sometimes after I click at the beginning, it seems like this is going to be interesting.  But as the short video winds on, I keep not hearing what I’m listening for.  As it approaches the end, I realize what’s going on.  They are trying to get me to subscribe to their channel by grabbing my interest with something that is worth being interested in.  They do a good job of keeping my attention.  I sometimes watch to the point that they say something to the effect, “if you want to know the answer to this puzzle, subscribe to our feed.”

Now, as I said at the beginning, if it didn’t work, they wouldn’t keep trying to do it.  The other side of that is the only way it works is that there are enough people who keep falling for it that it pays them to deceive.  In a free country they can do this.  I salute them.  If it supports them and advances their agenda in life, and doesn’t do any real harm to those of us who hang up, more power to them.  At the same time, it wouldn’t work if we weren’t so gullible, and if we did not refuse to see what’s written on the wall in front of us.

This is another form of “people get the government they deserve”.  I have family members who don’t like me saying that.  The fact that they don’t like it does not make it any less true.  We got Joe Biden.  I admit the election was stolen.  I think it was a hideous crime by the Democrats and the deep state.  At the same time they would not have gotten away with it if the people in those states did not put up with.  It shows that they did and continue to like it.

You get the YouTube videos you deserve.

homo unius libri