Once upon a scroll, you were minding your own business, when a post or headline caught your attention deliberately screaming at you: “You Won’t Believe What Happened to This Man After Drinking 5 Cups of Coffee a Day!” You roll your eyes; of course, you won't accept it because it's most likely something stupid.  But what if your thumb hovers over something wild?  You choose to click.

 And boom—dopamine delivered, not because the article was excellent, but because you had just fed the beast.

That is why sensationalism still sells.  It's the curiosity gap in action, or the psychological itch we get when we know just enough to desire more. 

Psychologists such as George Loewenstein have researched how incomplete information causes our brains to become restless.  That restlessness is translated into action: the click.

Sensationalism and clickbait feds on curiosity gap, emotional triggers, exaggeration – amplifying events or facts to make them sound more dramatic, urgency to know something interesting or shocking.

Sensational headlines not only entice readers to learn more, but they also manipulate their feelings.  Words like "shocking," "heartbreaking," and "outrageous" activate switches in our brains, causing us to respond before we think. 

And it's not always about joy or astonishment; indignation can sometimes be effective.  Rage-baiting is a profitable relative of clickbait, in which headlines are designed to irritate you enough to engage.  Algorithms enjoy the heat because more comments and shares equal more money.

And in relation to money, welcome to the economy of attention.  You want to focus on money here, and platforms will dangle anything sparkly so you can get it.  For this reason, you see YouTube taking action against deceptive thumbnails in India ("The President Just Quit!"—but, no, he didn't) or large publishers like Reach stuffing their websites with dramatic headlines and a lot of advertisements to make up for the drop in print revenue.

Meanwhile, in an attempt to profit from ad impressions, AI farms are producing clickbait articles with phony bylines.

Another hook is the fear of missing out (FOMO).  Headlines such as "Only 24 Hours Left to Learn This Secret!" take advantage of our fear of falling behind.  Adding cognitive ease, making headlines brief, list-based, and simple to read makes the combination attractive to our brains. 

We are more inclined to click on a headline that supports our preconceived notions since even our biases are played.  And if it seems like everyone else is talking about it, well, we're social beings.

This has most likely happened to you in real time.  On social media, hundreds of conspiracy theories were sparked by a headline about Kate Middleton's "mystery absence" a few weeks ago.  The teasing phrasing had millions of people guessing (and clicking) for days, even though the actual change was much less spectacular.

Recently, a well-known new channel criticized "Outrage as City Bans American Flag in Schools."  That seems surprising, doesn't it?  For repairs, a single local school really temporarily removed all flags, including state ones.  However, the clickbait has already been fueled by the anger bait.

On certain platforms, you may come across something like "These 17 Pictures Will Completely Change How You See the World," which combines ambiguous promise with a curiosity gap.  You are already there, browsing through, so they might or might not do so.

It also fuels the entertainment media industry. The recent news article "Massive Feud Erupts Backstage at the Grammys!" focused on a brief argument between two artists regarding the timing of their performances. However, "feud" is far more popular than "awkward chat."

The choice of words for news generates enough sensationalism to keep the audience interested.

Sports should also not be overlooked. It turned out that the "shocking" incident was actually a minor training injury sustained during practice, as reported in the article "Legend's Career in Jeopardy After Shocking Incident." Inflated to entice you in, but not fake.

The unsettling reality is that we allow sensationalism to succeed.  We want for fresh experiences, adrenaline rushes, and the prospect of insider information. 

The issue is that the system is rewarded with each click, which trains it to provide us with more of the same. 

You are both the protagonist and the reward in this never-ending tale.  Whether you choose to scroll past and keep your curiosity, your outrage, and your attention in your own hands, or to continue feeding the cycle, the only true twist ending is your choice.