The year was 2016. A young man sat at his desk in his dorm room. The evening had grown steadily later as the young man pecked away at his laptop, finishing up some reflection paper due for some class. When the young man finally finished his writing, eyes fighting the heavy advances of sleep, he saved his paper in some folder of his hard drive and popped open a web browser. Google Chrome, of course, for although the young man was a Microsoft fan at heart, he couldn’t bear to navigate the world wide web on the unresponsive Microsoft Edge or Internet Explorer. Not for lack of trying, you understand. He had given them a fair shot. More than a fair shot, truly. But the year was 2016, and if there was one thing the young man would not tolerate, it was inferior, unresponsive browsing quality.

The young man typed a series of keys, a string of actions that was as familiar to him as turning a key or shaking someone’s hand. Pages loaded and rendered in front of him. His personal email. His school email. The Odyssey Online dashboard. A video game subreddit. His Twitter feed. His Facebook page. Although the night was late, the pages still stuttered and grumbled to life slowly, burdened under the weight of hundreds of college students watching Netflix simultaneously on the college Wi-Fi connection across campus. The young man muttered with irritation. Surely his classmates could find better things to do at this hour than clog up the bandwidth for students like himself that simply wanted to browse the web after an assignment was completed. Couldn’t they watch the Netflix Original Series “Stranger Things” another time?

Everybody on campus after 5:00pm every day, ever.

Wi-Fi speed would not be improved by cursing under one’s breath, however, and it truly wasn’t that slow when the young man thought about it. Perhaps he had even overloaded the browser with too many commands at once. That must have been it, as seconds after all the pages loaded, he noticed that the responsiveness had significantly improved. This pleased him. After all, the year was 2016, it wasn’t too much to expect the campus Wi-Fi could handle his internet traffic with ease.

The young man went about his business. He had a few emails from classmates and professors that needed to be dealt with, and as he wrote, he thought of something clever to post to his friends. “I’m reading a book right now about anti-gravity,” he typed, “it’s impossible to put down!” The young man snickered quietly at his own cleverness. That was sure to get a like or two.

Eventually the young man finished the important matters and turned to his Facebook page. He scrolled down the tapestry of memes, advertisements, cat pictures, DIY guacamole recipe videos, clips of people jumping on high boxes in gyms, and political commentary about the latest soundbite some Republican presidential candidate had composed regarding some group of people or other. Down, down, down he scrolled, deeper into the depths of social media, until something caught his eye.

“10 Reasons You’re a Pretty Cool Person.”

The young man was intrigued. There wasn’t anything revolutionary about the article itself, of course. After all, it was the year 2016, and listicles made up 99.99% of all clickable articles on the world wide web. But there was something about the content of this article that made the young man stop his scrolling, drawn by a magnetic force to the article’s thumbnail: a hip-looking teenager with a big smile, pointing straight at the young man. The young man froze. “Me?” he thought, “no, surely this article isn’t about me.” But the longer he looked at the article, the more enticing it looked. There was something about this article that made it stick out from the other ten billion articles structured the same way, and the young man figured this was enough reason to warrant a brief investigation. He dragged his mouse curser to the thumbnail and clicked.

You'll never believe what this website is saying about clickbait!

Another web page popped up in a separate tab on the young man’s laptop. It was mostly white, with a red boundary. That said, there was something disconcerting about the page. The middle of the page had a large picture of the hip-looking teenager again, but the outside of the page was absolutely overrun with advertisements. Flashing boxes popped on and off across the screen, shouting things like “CREDIT SCORE!” and “SALE!” and “TRENDING!” There were links to other articles too, smattered crazily across the page. “12 REASONS WHY THAT THING YOU LIKE ISN’T AS COOL AS YOU THINK IT IS!” screamed one, “READ SPECULATIONS I MADE UP ABOUT SOME FAMOUS TV SHOW EVERYONE LIKES!” blurted another. Along the top of the page, three ducks with targets swam across the screen. “SHOOT TWO AND WIN A HAWAIIAN SWEEPSTAKE!” it declared, while a popup blared its way to the top and cried, “CONGRATULATIONS YOU’RE OUR 1,000,000^TH CUSTOMER, YOU WON $1,000,000, JUST GIVE US YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER!” Colors and icons and banners blurred together in front of the young man, who was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. He pushed some of the ads to the side and focused on the article at the center of the page. He had come here to find out the ten reasons that he was a pretty cool person, and he wasn’t going to leave now. Besides, the advertisers were clearly unaware that it was the year 2016, because that duck hunt ad was so 2006.

The thumbnail had two arrows on either side of it, big green buttons that helped the young man understand he had some kind of slideshow in front of him. Seeing no information on the first slide other than the title, the young man pressed the right-facing arrow to proceed to the next page. Some text appeared. “10 Reasons You’re a Pretty Cool Person” it read. The young man clicked again. Nothing happened, but he noticed that the browser said that the page was loading. After a second or two, the next piece of information loaded. “Number 1.” The young man rolled his eyes. He had no patience for this drawn out game. He clicked the right-facing arrow again.

“Number 1: You clicked this article! Clearly you’re pretty cool! :D”

The young man tilted his head in confusion. That didn’t seem to be very insightful information. Anybody could have clicked that article, but as the young man knew, not everybody was a pretty cool person. He wasn’t sure that clicking on an article made anybody more or less of anything, but he decided to give the author the benefit of the doubt and press on. There must be more compelling information deeper in the slideshow, and he was determined to find it. He proceeded to the next page. *Click!*

Waiting for clickbait articles to actually say something meaningful..

The page went blank, then flashed back to life in front of him. A new thumbnail sat in the middle, this time with an old man sitting at a table reading a book. The young man squinted and looked closer, but as his eyes began to focus, a whole new swarm of ads finished loading and engulfed the page once again. “ONLINE COLLEGE!” “SPONSORED ARTICLES!” “STUDENT LOAN PROGRAMS!” The young man was taken aback by the new flood of ads. He hadn’t even changed pages, but here was a whole new batch of product and services loudly begging to be perused!

Frustrated by the distracting nature of the site, the young man pushed all the popup out of the way just to have his computer start making an unexpected noise. “For those of you who have dogs and take good care of them, make sure that you don’t go to the PurpleTree Vet Office in Townsville, Statestate,” it chirped loudly through the speakers, “because one of the veterinary technicians has been discovered giving her dog patients Kibble-Kibble Yum-Yum milkbones, a treat that the Dog Food Quality Assurance Association Program, or DFQAAP, has deemed unhealthy.” The young man stared at the page astonished. He had no idea why the laptop was prattling at him about a vet office in Townsville, Statestate. He didn’t even live in Statestate. He could not tell where the source of the sound was coming from for some time until eventually he scrolled down past a wall of ads and found a video playing in the bottom right corner of the screen.

Oh god, there's a video playing somewhere, where is it?! LEAVE ME ALONE I JUST WANT TO FIND OUT HOW MUCH I'M OBSESSED WITH FOOD!

The young man angrily clicked on the pause button, trying to stop the unwanted video from playing. Instead of stopping the video, however, the pause button instead pulled up another entirely different tab with a set of blaring advertisements of its own. The flustered young man quickly closed the new page, flashing back to the original article where the unwanted video was still playing. Infuriated, but unable to resolve the problem, the young man simply muted his laptop’s speakers and took a deep breath. After he had calmed, he returned back to the top of the page where the article was and clicked on the next right-facing arrow.

The page loaded at a glacier’s pace, slow as molasses on a cold winter’s day. Slowly, one by one, ads popped onto the page. After nearly 20 seconds, the second reason finally loaded in. “Reason 2.” The thumbnail of the old man reading a book failed to load entirely, instead showing a small placeholder icon of a cartoon picture frame with a hyperlink below reading “image missing.” At this point, the young man could hardly handle it anymore. He was dying to know the second reason that this author believed he was a pretty cool person, so he clicked on the right-facing arrow again and waited…

answers.com, where clickbait readers go to die.

…and waited…

…and waited…

…and waited…

After nearly two minutes of the page failing to load, the young man slammed the laptop shut and stormed out of the room. At this point, he knew that the problem was no longer the campus Wi-Fi. It was the site itself. He swore that he would never visit that dreadful site again, no matter how enticing the article may appear. There was nothing on the planet that could compel him to drag himself through such a poorly constructed website. No listicle writer would ever cause him that much pain ever again. The young man vowed to never be fooled again, for it was the year 2016, and if there was one thing the young man would not tolerate, it was inferior, unresponsive browsing quality.