I recently read Alan Alda's first memoir Never have your dog stuffed which was pretty good. Hence I began looking for more information about him on the web. I came across a YouTube video At 89, Alan Alda reveals the seven actors he HATED the most. Gee, in the book he didn't hate anyone. So I was curious what this was about. This could be interesting. It was not. The title was extremely deceptive. (More than most clickbait?) Here is the list and what was said about them:
Wayne Rogers (Trapper John on MASH): The YouTube video said Wayne Rogers felt he didn't have a big enough role on MASH.
Maclean Stevenson (Henry Blake on MASH): Same as Wayne Rogers.
Gary Burghoff (Radar O'Reily on MASH). The YouTube video said that Gary had emotional outbursts on set, or isolated himself. He felt trapped in the role, unable to grow.
Robert Duvall (Played Frank Burns in the Movie MASH). The YouTube video said that Robert Duvall had a different take on the role of Frank Burns in the movie than that Alan Alda had for the TV show. Note that this was not the role Alan Alda played. Also note that Robert D and Alan A have never met.
Edward Winter (Played Colonel Flagg on MASH): The YouTube video said that Winter was only in 7 of the 251 episodes.
David Ogden Stiers (Played Charles Winchester on MASH): The YouTube video said that David did not socialize with the crew.
Larry Linville (Played Frank Burns on MASH): The YouTube video said that Larry L did not like that his role was one-dimensional.
Quote:
Did Alan Alda hate these actors? Probably not.
Also a common line was
Alan has always spoken of X in positive terms.
The clickbait worked in that I read it, and indeed, I am blogging about it. But I won't fall for clickbait for another 5 years (the last time I fell for click bait before this was 5 years ago.)
Lesson of the day: do not fall for clickbait.
Points:
1) Since it is well known that clickbait is deceptive, does it still work. Well... I fell for it.
2) Is this clickbait more deceptive than usual or not?
3) The term clickbait was coined in 2008 by Jay Geiger in a blog post. The word was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2016. For more on the word see here.
4) Is the title of this blog post, Extreme cases of clickbait!, itself clickbait?
5) Could an AI be trained to classify videos as Clickbait or Not? In general no since one person's clickbait is another person's HMMM- what is the opposite of clickbait? (Google said anti-clickbait and honest-headline, neither of which really works.) Perhaps AI could be trained on what (say) Lance thinks is clickbait.
Request
If you have an extreme example of clickbait, please leave a comment about it.
> If you have an extreme example of clickbait, please leave a comment about it.
ReplyDeletehttps://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2026/07/extreme-cases-of-clickbait.html
The example did not feel extreme :)
AH- to call it extreme I would have to look at a random sample of clickbait and measure them. I think I'll pass
DeleteAI is useful for getting a summary of the video from its transcript.
ReplyDeletemost YouTube videos don't have enough to even 10 sec.
YouTube makes money through engagement and advertising. They are not optimizing the platform for users time and benefits.
So we end up with a lot of deceptive practices on the platform exploiting people's ignorance and psychological weaknesses.
You might enjoy Enshitification series by Cory Doctorow. It explains why we end up with more and more shitty experience on these platforms.
ReplyDeleteWhen a platform's incentives (for making money) are not aligned with their consumers utility, we should expect to end up with shitty experience over time, particularly if they become a necessary monopoly and lockin.
The standard strategy here is to become the dominant platform and then exploit users to maximize profits.
We really need much stronger antitrust enforcement, but don't hold your breath for that happening during this administration.
MASH is not quite the era I started watching TV but I recall those reruns even at that time it looked liked a bit anachronistic.nowadays nobody watches TV.
ReplyDeleteBut the point here is, what was the equivalent of clickbait for the traditional TV? There must have been one, I'd be curious to know.
Teasers for "News at 11" stories run during primetime, such as "Why your toaster could kill you, tonight on the news at 11."
DeleteOften it would be "Killer toasters at 11" making me think I had just a few hours before being attacked.
DeleteHeadline: "Why Adam Sandler called the police 2 days after Taylor Swift's wedding"
ReplyDeleteContent: In an unrelated trip, Adam Sandler visited Nantucket and called the Nantucket Police Department’s non-emergency line to ask where he could find a pickup basketball game.
thanks for clarifying. so clickbait has been around for some time even during the TV era!
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone though still remember how impressive the TV era was? (This is not clickbait but reminisce bait)!
With Sony's and Seiko's handheld gadgets that sprung into existing prior my time but even a decade++ later , were still considered marvelous want to have inventions:
Sony Watchman
Seiko TV Watch
Very Sad to see that era of Japanese innovation be gone. Were did these people go in Japan, what happened to the spirit?
(On a different, (i'd say superior), league than most other innovations, including iphone, etc...).