Carmichael’s Clickbait: Having fun with sports

Last month, a major online publication posted its “Most overrated NBA players” list and had Domantas Sabonis at number one.

This of course was amongst the dumbest things I’ve ever seen, and many others shared the same feeling.

So of course, we all clicked it, shared it, and talked about it on our radio shows, which of course gave the writer and his bosses exactly what they wanted: Clicks. Long gone are the days of long-form journalism in sports media, with a few exceptions (Wickersham, Van Natta, Fainaru-Wada, and the incomparable Wright Thompson). That’s about it.

Everyone wants to yell and scream, and credibility be damned.

I don’t blame the writer, not one bit. They’re paid on clicks and views, that’s just today’s reality. And unless you’re a news breaker, getting clicks is not an easy thing. You can do a heavily researched, stat-heavy opus on something actually groundbreaking, and it will do just ok.

But post a poll on which NBA player you’d want in your corner in a street fight against Nate Diaz and Barbie, and LOOK OUT!!

My favorites are always:

1. Insert ridiculous premise (IS JAMES HARDEN BETTER THAN MICHAEL JORDAN)
2. Provide some weak lame support line (MJ NEVER AVERAGED A TRIPLE DOUBLE)
3. Then the tag- (AGREE? DISAGREE? DISCUSS AND RT AND YELL)

Boom.

As my good friend and former Kings Trainer, Pete Youngman would say with an eye-roll, this is Content with a capital C.

So in that line of thought I’m going to start an occasional series of completely obvious click bait articles. Think of it as our little joke. I will provide a link to this very article at the beginning of each one, so all one would have to do is click and read to be in on the joke, but you and I both know that ain’t gonna happen. People just want to YELL AT CONTENT!

Example:

“Should Harrison Barnes have just retired so Murray and Vezenkov can both start?” (clickbait premise)

“When you think about it, they would save money, and also develop Keegan much quicker. Also Sasha didn’t come all the way over from France to sit” (Lame supporting point + bonus for getting Vezenkov’s country wrong)

AGREE? DISAGREE? DISCUSS AND RT MY CONTENT

Something like that. My only hope is to get it occasionally to Twitter just to troll because quite frankly, it’s just so much more fun.

Think of this as the Freddie McGibbeholter (IYKYK) of online content.

See you soon.

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