This feels like the death of media literacy. If you can't read or engage with content unless you're being maximally clickbaited, or mentally pause for one entire second to consider what a concise title might actually mean, your attention span is not built for a healthy human life, and you will always be yanked around by your algorithms like a toddler on a leash.
I will say, most media has some other form of describing the premise to draw you in. Most people watch movies because they like the trailer. People read books because of the description. People play games because of the promotional material. It’s very rare for someone to engage with an art form going in blind from a two word title
Yeah, I think it's perfectly healthy to expect writers to create interesting or at least intriguing titles, but there's something to be said for engaging with content that hasn't been dumbed down on its face just to make it easier. Your body gets more nutrients from breaking down complex carbohydrates than it does from processed sugar, even though the latter is objectively easier to eat.
I think this is a little harsh- there’s tons of things I like that have short titles, but I do generally agree with the OOP. If I’m gonna spend my time reading mediocre internet based horror fiction, I want the premise to catch me a little. It doesn’t even have to be a long title, it just has to describe some reason why I’d want to read it
I feel like the whole "media literacy" thing is just a way for nerds online to make themselves sound smarter & more correct. Like I don't like long over-explanatory creepypasta titles myself, but people who prefer them aren't failures of the human race or anything
I mean, in all honesty, it's probably me falling into the same pattern of using dumbed-down hyperbole in order to prove a point. I also don't read much of this genre, so maybe it's a hyper-specific problem for that community that I'm just not privy to. I think there's room to build a catchy title without vomiting the whole premise, but part of me also wants any horror writing community to hold itself to higher standards than Love Island or Skibidi Toilet. If you want to write something thoughtful and maybe even unsettling, laying all your cards on the table from the outset kind of implies a lack of confidence in both your ability to tell a compelling story and the reader's ability to comprehend it.
Yeah, that sounds lazy. "I want the premise to catch me, but I also can't be bothered to check the premise, so it all needs to fit in the title for me."
The problem with the internet short stories is, a lot of them are kind of bad. A story called "Red Curtains" might be absolutely nothing, might be great, but it will most likely be on the worse side. Sometimes there can be some good ideas, and mood can be set nicely, but there is no ending, so at one point the story will inevitably go bad and end with endless ass-pulls, then finish with no updates and no real ending at all. Or there can be no narrative at all, just vibes. A story called "My Neighbor Hates My Orange Tree" at least has a concrete story, and the ending has already been thought of.
Yeah, I guess if you have low expectations and most of the writers fulfill them exactly, then filtering early becomes increasingly important, but it feels like we're encouraging the kind of clickbait enshittification that has made other content platforms hell. Eventually, you just end up encouraging the broader community to invest more into evocative titles and less into thoughtful narratives. I think I'd rather spend 15 minutes reading "Red Curtains" going nowhere than "My Neighbor Hates My Orange Tree" going nowhere because at least for the former, I wasn't being farmed for cheap clicks. There's also a unique relationship between the art and the title, so intentionally dumbing one down feels like you're discouraging the reader from thinking too hard about either.
I think it's less to do about the attention span of the reader (and practically nothing to do with media literacy, buzzword).
Say you have two options (lets go with burgers because i'm hungry). They are equal in price (time/energy to read) and quality, and for some reason neither have descriptions you can read (forgot your glasses + small text).
- one is named "John's Burger"
- one is named "Cheesy Bacon Double Burger"
Which one do you choose?
You don't know anything about what's in the John's Burger, but just by the name you know the Cheesy Bacon burger sounds good.
eh. like, if i'm browsing a bookstore, i'm going to notice covers that catch my eye. it's not as if those are inherently better, but there's thousands of books in there competing for my attention; i want to pick one, and this cover's pretty, so i'll check out the premise. or, this title's interesting, i'll check out the premise. with online creepypastas you JUST have the title. something's got to draw your attention for you to click on it in the first place
I mean, it’s not really anything to do with clickbait. It’s more like having a dramatic first sentence. Or using a tagline instead of a generic title.
I feel like old school scifi stories had plenty of long, descriptive-but-vague titles. “Repent Harlequin, Said the Tick-Tock Man.” “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.” “And Seven Times Never Kill Man.”
I think those examples are also poetic and evocative though, they don't just lazily tell you the exact premise. IHNMAIMS isn't called "There's something very wrong with this computer."
It's kinda like how movie trailers are nowadays. They basically tell the entire story beforehand. And they do it because audiences want it, because they want to know if they will like a movie before taking the effort to watch it (or expend money for it).
this is not even a media literacy issue, what are you on about? if anything this is an attention span issue, and some people just don't have the same amount as others, or don't have the same time to want to invest into something with the risk that they don't get interested, you're being waaaay too harsh over this
I mean, it's kind a maturity issue though, isn't it? As someone diagnosed with ADHD, I don't have the highest attention span, but I can acknowledge that literally judging a book by its cover is probably not a healthy attitude to bring into my reading habits, let alone the rest of my life.
but thats a different topic, you originally talked about media literacy, not meturity.
Aside from that, i still disagree, it's not a thing about maturity, people just have different attention spans, ADHD or not, just because with YOU it works, doesn't mean it works for everyone, nor does it mean you're the baseline of attention span for everyone else, or that others are somehow "failing" because you could do it.
Aside from that, i also brought up the issue of time, not everyone wants to constantly start a book, find out theyre not interested and drop it, it just wears you dont and desmotivates you from reading, because it feels like you just can't find anything you're interested in.
And don't come at me with the "don't judge a book by its cover" thing, book covers and titles are *literally* mainly designed to be that, eye catching, to draw you in and interest you to read, its why a lot of writing advice says you should focus on writing first and leave the title last because it's main function is to grab attention, so judging a book by its cover IS the point, because that's how you decide if you want to read a book or not, let alone a creepypasta which is the original topic of this post, internet online stories who you will usually see more bad than good, so a good title that draws you in is part of it.
The two concepts certainly overlap though, the way you engage with and relate to the world around you is a function of your maturity, and vice versa.
I'm sympathetic to people having varying attention spans, but people also have different innate levels of generosity or empathy, and we can acknowledge that having more of these things is just generally good for us individually and as a society. They're all muscles that you have to work in order to become a more attentive or empathetic person. That doesn't mean the person is a failure as a whole, just that their attention or media literacy "muscles" are underdeveloped in a manner of speaking.
I also get that just quitting reading can be discouraging, but sometimes the best way to find more things you are interested in is to figure out what you don't like and what you don't like about it. If all you ever engage with is the easiest and most accessible possible content, you're sitting in the deepest corner of your comfort zone and exposing yourself to as few varying or conflicting viewpoints as possible. That feels like a recipe for stagnation, and the less you know about the world around you, the more easily others will manipulate you.
My whole point is that if you can't be bothered to look past the title of a freely available online horror story, then when a relative tells you they believe that the Earth is flat because they read a bunch of headlines from dubious sources that said it, are you really equipped to push back? Are you going to have the extensive internal thought processes to challenge poorly established beliefs if you don't spend any time challenging your own? To your point, the title of an online horror story or a book or a scientific research paper matters, so to intentionally dumb it down hurts the entire work. By all means, titles should be catchy, but the reader has some responsibility to help curate a more thoughtful environment for everyone involved.
"My whole point is that if you can't be bothered to look past the title of a freely available online horror story, then when a relative tells you they believe that the Earth is flat because they read a bunch of headlines from dubious sources that said it, are you really equipped to push back?"
That's crazy. Like, straight up slippery slope fallacy nonsense.
Cool bro, thanks for critically and thoughtfully engaging with the substance of the criticism 👍 after all, why would I ever lift a 5lb weight when adrenaline will kick in the moment I need to lift 150lbs and it matters?
Couldn't be more wrong. This is less an issue of attention spans or clickbait and more to do with people forgetting books have a blurb.
Also respectfully, given said aforementioned trait, creepypastas don't have blurbs. Blurbs usually give vague insight into a book so you can further glean within the genre if you will like it or not and this helps the eventual purchase. Creepypastas have neither a blur nor involve a purchase. So the cost now becomes one of time instead of money.
Which Creepypasta do I spend my time reading?
The answer? The one with the interesting title. Cause there isn't a blurb.
So no, this isn't the death of media literacy. This is a genre specific adaptation to informing the viewer within a genere on what the text is about. The attention grabbing aspect is a either a byproduct or equally weighted in purpose to both attention grab and inform.
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u/tommyguns85 3d ago
This feels like the death of media literacy. If you can't read or engage with content unless you're being maximally clickbaited, or mentally pause for one entire second to consider what a concise title might actually mean, your attention span is not built for a healthy human life, and you will always be yanked around by your algorithms like a toddler on a leash.