The Internet is full of headlines that grab your attention with buzzwords. But often when we click through, we find the content hardly delivers and wastes our time. We close the page, feeling we’ve been deceived.

那些用流行语组成的“吸睛”标题在网上随处可见。点开之后，我们常常会发现这些文章文不对题，完全浪费了我们的时间。关掉网页的我们深深感到自己被骗了。

In Chinese these types of headlines are called “biaoti dang”. In English, they are referred to as “click bait”.

在中国，这种类型的标题被称作“标题党”。英文中，它们被叫做“点击诱饵（click bait）”。

In some worst-case scenarios¹, click bait might lead a user to a page full of advertisements or to a completely different website. Click bait exists in mainstream² websites too, and they’re just as irritating there.

最糟糕的是，一些标题让用户点开后发现里面全是广告，或者干脆链到了另一个毫不相关的页面。而现在，一些主流网站也出现了标题党的身影，同样令人甚是不快。

A post on Yahoo.com describes a click bait article on BusinessInsider.com. The headline reads: “This phrase will make you seem more polite”. First, when you click through, you find the article has a different headline: “Four words to seem more polite.”

雅虎网上有篇帖子就讲述了美国商业内幕网的一篇标题党文章。该文章的标题是“一句话让你显得更有礼貌”。点开后，你会看到文章实则另有标题——“用这四个词更显礼貌得体”。

Then, on reading the article, you find out it’s actually an essay about the virtues³ of empathy. And what of the four words? They’re “Wow, that sounds hard.” Why not just put those words in the headline to save us all time?

接下来再读文章，你就会发现其主题实际是在赞美同情心。所以，说好的四个词呢？原来它们是“听着好难！”那为什么不直接把它们写在标题里、省省大家的时间？

Or, on some video websites, you might encounter headlines such as “Here’s what happens when six puppies visited a college campus”. You would expect the puppies to have wreaked⁴ havoc⁵ on the school, right? Turns out it’s just some completely uneventful dog footage.

或者你还会在一些视频网站上看到这样的标题——“当六只小狗走进大学校园……”。你以为自己会看到小狗们在校园里大搞破坏，结果只是校园里出现了一些再平常不过的小狗脚印罢了。

Nowadays, with the popularity of social media, many news outlets⁷ tweet click bait links to their stories. These tweets take advantage of the curiosity gap (“you won’t believe what happens next!”) or attempt to draw the reader into a story using a question in the headline.

如今，随着社交媒体的流行，许多新闻媒体都成为推特标题党，诱导用户点击链接阅读他们的文章。他们利用好奇心吊人胃口（比如，“你绝对不会相信接下来发生的事！”），或者以问句为标题吸引读者点开文章。

These click bait headlines are so annoying that some good Samaritans are attempting to save people time by exposing news outlet⁶ click bait through social media. The Twitter account @SavedYouAClick, run by 25-year-old media professional Jake Beckman, is one such example.

这些标题党实在恼人，一些见义勇为之士已经开始在社交媒体上揭露新闻媒体中的标题党，为大家节省时间。一个名为SavedYouAClick的推特账号就是其中之一，该账号的主人杰克?贝克曼今年25岁，是一名专业媒体人。

Trash filter

垃圾过滤器

A Reuters blog explains Beckman’s method: He grabs tweets linking to a publication’s story, and then he retweets them with a click-saving comment.

路透社有一篇博文讲述了贝克曼的具体做法：他先抓取含有文章链接的推文，然后转发加上“干货”评价，以免大家浪费鼠标。

For example, recently CNET tweeted “So iOS 8 appears to be jailbreakable but...”, with a link to its coverage⁸ of Apple’s product announcements. Beckman retweeted it with this comment appended: “... it hasn’t been jailbroken yet.” When Business Insider’s Twitter tried to entice⁹ readers with, “A former Navy SEAL explains how to escape a dangerous situation,” Beckman read the story and distilled¹⁰ its essence: “Run away. Fast.”

比如，近期科技资讯网CNET的一篇推文写到“iOS8貌似能够越狱，不过……”，而它提供的链接则会跳转到苹果产品的广告页。贝克曼于是转发了这条推文，并加上了评论“……现在还不能越狱。”看到商业内幕网为了吸引读者在推特发布了题为“一个前海豹突击队员告诉你如何脱离险境”的链接，贝克曼读了文章后则直接提炼出其实质：“赶快逃跑”。

Since founding the account in May 2014, Beckman’s Twitter experiment has brought him more than 131,000 followers¹¹. According to a Reuters blog, Beckman monitors more than 100 websites. In an interview, Beckman told Vice¹² that @SavedYouAClick is “just my way of trying to help the Internet be less terrible.” Asked about his goal, he said, “I’d love to see publishers think about the experience of their readers first. I think there’s an enormous opportunity for publishers to provide readers with informative¹³ updates that include links so you can click through and read more.”

贝克曼的账号创建于2014年5月，现在粉丝数已经超过13.1万。路透社的一篇博文透露，有100多家网站都在贝克曼的“监控”之下。在接受全球青年媒体Vice采访时，贝克曼表示，SavedYouAClick只是自己净化网络的一种方式。当问到他的目标时，贝克曼说，“我更希望发布者能够以读者的感受为先。我认为发布者完全可以为读者提供包含链接在内的内容更新，这样读者才会想要点进去看，也会愿意阅读更多内容。”