Animals in dramatic situations, innocent children's eyes, scandalous injustices or romantic, heartfelt declarations of love to family members...
There are pages or profiles on Facebook that don't necessarily offer the greatest information value, but rather a great emotional value. What matters to the site owners is not so much whether everything they write is actually true, but rather whether what is published has a high click value.
At the heart of these publications are emotions that are intended to awaken readers. This type of presentation even has a name: Likebait! (Also known as like-bait or like bait in various spellings).
Likebait is web content that is specifically designed to get Facebook users to click “Like” or make a social media reaction.
The concept of likebait is not a new invention, as we deal with content from the likebait concept on a daily basis in social media. Some even turn it into art!
And everyone joins in...
Of course, it's a completely normal human reaction if you want to respond to a Likebait. But you have to be aware that the author doesn't always mean it in the publication the way you perceive it yourself. Likebait content is often commercially motivated or used to promote oneself.
Likebait is generally posted with the aim of evoking emotions in social media users. Since there was originally only the like thumb on Facebook, classic likebaiting was also real likebaiting and aimed at being liked or at encouraging users to signal that they agreed to the content by saying “like”. You can now give more than just a simple like on Facebook, which is why the content of the likebait has changed and you can find more and more publications that outrage users.
Predictable!
Anyone who publishes Likebaits knows exactly that users will interact with it. This often happens in predictable ways – such as posting an engaging video, quote image, or meme. The key word here is “emotion”. And a dramatic clarity.
Unfortunately, Likebait has also shown that fakes in particular have a high emotional potential and therefore false reports are (consciously?) pushed into the Likebait scheme and published. This not only leads to reactions from readers, but also to the emergence of unnecessary fears and even hysteria. Since emotional content usually has a very high reach on Facebook, at this point you are miserably chasing after a fake and have little chance of catching up with it in order to refute it.
Driven
Unfortunately, there is also the related phenomenon that likebait leads into a trap. On reconstructed websites there are supposed like buttons that do NOT trigger a like, but instead start something completely different due to their underlying source text.
The danger that free riders will at some point feel encouraged to try out fake scenarios in real life in order to harm other people should not be underestimated.
Therefore, the following also applies to Likebaiting: Think first – then click!
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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )



