Delightfully Amusing & Refreshingly Revealing

   Every so often I get on a website purporting to be a news service that has more clickbait features than actual current useful news features.

   Which was at one time a source of annoyance for me but somehow has morphed into a source of not only entertainment, but of a refreshing source of reassurance as to hope for the future.

   Yes, yes, that statement begs for an explanation, so I will explain away.

   See, the clickbait features would be annoying due to false advertising of the contents and/or the purpose of the feature. For example, I would read the headline of one of the features, something like, "The Dark Secret That Hollywood Doesn't Want You To Know!" and, my curiosity being what it is, I would click on the feature with the expectation of learning something new and interesting...and get an 18 page story that bombarded my eyes with ads for useless crap just to read on the last page that the dark secret was a rumor of dubious veracity that was probably lifted from one of Kenneth Anger's books and just about anyone with a passing knowledge of the history of Hollywood had known about for years.

  And that was true for a large boatload of features of that ilk; "Twenty Historical Facts That Were Swept Under The Rug", "Ten Forgotten Financial Scandals That Shocked The World," "32 Facts About The Space Program The Government Doesn't Want You To Know," and so on and so on...all of which would reveal themselves (eventually) to be well-documented, well known, not shocking or secret stuff that was pretty much a waste of my time to read.

   So, you know, very disappointing and very annoying.

   And, yeah, it was my own damn fault for continuing to click on the clickbait features after the first one proved to be a waste of time, but dagnabbit, it is very difficult for me to resist minutiae and/or trivia..it's like heroin to me. 

   Then one day a thought hit me...that, while these little clickbait features were definitely annoying, they were also a little bit of an interesting insight into the world and minds of the very young internet users and content creators.

   That insight being that there is a lot of information out there that is not well-known to millions of younger people, and that these same younger people are curious about the past, and that these same young people are willing to do the research to discover new (to them) and exciting (to them) information about things they are curious about, whether it's the history of entertainment, politics, inventions, literature, social mores, etc., etc.

   So that, when it finally sank in, changed how I looked and read the clickbait features - cause I still look at and read them despite how much I really don't want to...resistance is futile.

   Now when I click on one of those features I go into it with a different approach, something akin to a "Now let's see what the those crazy young whippersnappers have learned today" attitude, which usually results in me finishing the read with an more satisfying "Wow, someone still cares to delve in the history of...whatever, that's cool."

   Which is way better than my old attitude of "What moron doesn't know that, what a waste of my time!"

  Or at least it's a better excuse for me to use for wasting my time, in any event.

  So, all you clickbait content creators, keep on keeping on with sharing your new discoveries, but please, try to limit your condemnation of previous generations missteps and triple-check your sources.