What exactly is clickbait, anyways? One definition is that it is a link or thumbnail image intended to attract attention and motivate viewers to visit a webpage or view a video. Clickbait can be deceptive or it can be sensational, but its main purpose is to get people to click a link so that a video or webpage can rack up a bunch of cheap, easy views. On top of that, a key quality of clickbait is that the promised information is deficient or disappointing in some way. In other words, the content does not live up to the promise implied in the link or thumbnail. So, obviously, some links and thumbnails unambiguously qualify as clickbait, while other instances are a little less clear-cut and so, as you might expect, at least to some extent, the determination that a link/thumbnail/video/webpage is clickbait is a bit subjective, but for most of us, we know it when we see it!