What Happens When Clickbait Headlines Avoid Mentioning the Young Boys Wouldn’t Slap the Girl?
Headlines like these are all over social media right now.
- Young boys asked to slap girl in social experiment
- What happens when you ask an Italian boy to slap a girl? You might be surprised.
- What happens when you put a girl in front of a boy and ask him to slap her?
Some of the headlines do desribe the video as “heartwarming,” or promises that “you’ll love” their reactions, so that variety of headline promises good news, but the goal of clickbait is not to inform, but rather to get people to click. The more informative “Young boys refuse to slap girl in viral video” is less clickbaity than ‘Young boys asked to slap girl in social experiment.”
Rather than linking to one of the countless sites that has repubished the link with promises for how you’ll feel, I’ll embed the YouTube video.
I am not amazed, shocked, stunned, or particularly heartwarmed to learn they refuse to slap her. I’m kind of digusted that the writers of these headlines assume we live in a world in which we’ll be surprised to learn young boys won’t obey an off-camera male voice inviting them to hit a girl.
Yes, the video is cute. At the same time, the video objectifies the girl.
We hear the boys talk a little about themselves, then we see their faces when the girl is brought out and inroduced by name; then the boys are invited to describe what they liike about her. Of course, they’ve just met her and as far as we can tell from the video she hasn’t even said anything ot them, so they can only react to her looks. Then the boys are invited to “caress” the girl. One little guy kind of awkwardly reaches up to rub her shoulder, while the others gently stroke her face. And of course, many of the websites using this video for clickbait choose a still image showing any of several moments where a boy has his hand on the girl’s cheek, which kind of maybe looks like he might be slapping her.
The editing is good — I did get that emotional whammy when the boys make their decision and start explaining why they won’t do it, though I notice that one boy gives, as part of his reasoning, “Because she’s pretty,” which suggests a less-pretty girl would get a different consideration.
I have mixed feelings about the ending, when the boys are invited to kiss the girl. One boy looks at the camera to ask, “On the cheek or on the mouth?” Yes, he’s an entrepreneurial and precocious little bro, but he’s asking the off-camera male director, rather than the girl herself. (Of course, I am going only by what the video shows — perhaps in the unedited interview we might see whether he also asks the girl’s permission.)
Anne Charboneau liked this on Facebook.
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I’m not criticizing any particular article… in fact, the article on the other end of this particular link is something I wrote on my own blog. I’m commenting specifically on the fact that so many headlines I’ve read that share this video on cickbaity blogs draw on how we are supposed to be “surprised” by what happens in the video. (I’ve also embedded the video on my blog… you can watch it there if you like.) The video itself doesn’t have a clickbait title… the video title is “‘Slap her’: children’s reactions,” while a typical clickbait blog uses a title like “What happens when you ask an Italian boy to slap a girl? You might be surprised.”
Technically, I agree about the title, but.
I think criticizing this article as “are we supposed to be surprised” is very off base. While it’s a personal opinion, why is it ok to share articles that follow the “villifying and attacking that person” pattern, but critisize articles that provide a positive example.
Depicting positive behavior is generally just as motivating as villifying negative behavior.
Whenever I’ve gone to actually view this video, it ends up not working, so unfortunately all I’ve been able to read is summaries. But I was delighted to see someone trying to talk about social situations in a way that was positive and provided positive examples rather than following the constant existing “someone bad, them villain, must hate them” pattern.
You mentioned posting articles before about the lack of positive roles models and positive depictions of men and such. Isn’t the above style of video/article a far better way to promote a “domestic violence is bad” message than just a non-stop stream of “men hit and are bad” message? I’m not saying one should never hear the second message, but the first one communicates a lot of the same message without villifying a whole group.
Amen.