He has died the one you had never heard named
Among the different subgenres of clickbait fishing, one of the crudest is the one that profits from the death of (relatively) unknown people. I was thinking about this in light of this headline from El Nacional: “Commotion over the tragic death of a beloved presenter and actress, hit by a train. She was only 54 years old”. This refers to Ernestina Pais, who had her peak over 20 years ago, in the Argentinian version of Caiga quien caiga. The media explain that she was now participating in the umpteenth edition of MasterChef. In other words, she was someone of no relevance to the Catalan or Spanish reader. But the formulation of the headline is constructed to generate the incógnita of whether it is someone the reader knows. This same headline, stating her name — which in other times would have been an essential requirement — would generate two and a half clicks. Every week there are several similar pieces, and the practice extends not only to experts in trawling but also to prestigious publications. Like when a news report is made about the passing of an actor who appeared in two episodes of Friends; this is trafficking in the morbid fascination with the death of someone you know your audience doesn't care about — it's blunt to put it this way, but we're among functional adults — with the bait of invoking a known brand. But when you don't even have that, a “commotion” and a “beloved” fix it, even if the reader later says an “oh, right” when they read a name or see a face that doesn't even remotely ring a bell.
The influence of social media pushes the media to use these practices that contribute to the world's noise. Their benefits are like sugar energy: immediate but short-lived. And it's addictive. If you abuse it, it can generate rejection in the reader who gets tired of associating clicks with disappointment. If you eliminate them entirely, you supposedly lose business opportunities and, also apparently, the ability to attract new audiences. Hamlet already said it: To click, or not to click.
