lowest-common-denominator, bottom-feeding linkbait
English translation: sordid sensational stories designed to attract you to click on the link to read more
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| 20:11 Oct 11, 2014 |
| English language (monolingual) [PRO] Social Sciences - Social Science, Sociology, Ethics, etc. | |||||||
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|  Selected response from: Charles Davis Spain Local time: 12:30 | ||||||
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| 4 +9 | sordid sensational stories designed to attract you to click on the link to read more |
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Answers
53 mins confidence: 
peer agreement (net): +9
peer agreement (net): +9sordid sensational stories designed to attract you to click on the link to read more Explanation: "Linkbait", also "clickbait", is an expressive term for something on the Internet that tempts people by offering them a link to material that sounds intriguing or attractive. Typically it's a headline about a famous person, which makes it look as though some sensational story is available if you click on the link to open a new page containing the story. So the headline or other material accompanying the link (maybe a photo) is the bait, tempting you metaphorically to swallow it and be hooked, like a fish. Lowest-common-denominator means something devoid of merit, something that appeals to the least discriminating audience, or to the largest possible number of people. It's a metaphor, from mathematics, where the lowest common denominator is "the smallest number that can be divided exactly by all the numbers below the lines in a group of two or more fractions" (Merriam-Webster). So the idea is that it's a story that is as "low", as crude and populist, as possible. Bottom-feeding refers to fish that live on the bottom of the sea or river and feed on disgusting things in the mud, just as those who click on the linkbait "feed" on the disgusting, sordid material they are offered. It's quite a clever extension of the fish metaphor, in a way; but "bottom-feeder" is used more generally as a metaphor to mean a scavenger and by extension an opportunist who profits from other people's misfortunes. Many of these "linkbait" stories, the kind that people are tempted by, are indeed about other people's misfortunes. -------------------------------------------------- Note added at 2 hrs (2014-10-11 22:14:45 GMT) -------------------------------------------------- A further point that I forgot to mention is that linkbait or clickbait has financial implications. The more people click on the link, the more money the site owner makes from advertising. If you do so, you will often find that a lot of irritating pop-up adverts appear. The phenomenon is being discussed currently not only in relation to the need for users to resist encouraging this material by "swallowing the bait", but also in relation to standards of journalism; even quite well-respected news sites are being accused by some of pandering to sensationalism for profit by providing tabloid-style "clickbait" material. |
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