The last few years have seen a big growth among liberal online publications of aggressively stupid anti-Straight White Male articles. Cynical editors encourage dumb young writers to regurgitate campus conventional wisdom in order to attract clicks from readers who want to see if the article can really be as brainless as the headline suggests.

I don’t think this traffic-generating is a secret. Here, for example, are a couple of comments on a Slate article:

Rael 16 minutes ago

This article is a race gender click bait trifecta. At 2.1 k comments, I guess that works pretty well. tungor 11 minutes ago

@Rael I really think they put these poorly thought out articles and completely illogical articles out there like this on purpose to generate website clicks for revenue. Perhaps the writers think we’re all just misogynists who don’t get it, but the article doesn’t support itself and the comments demand more intellectual rigor. It may work in the short-term for ad revenue, but I can’t imagine poorly argued articles are going to maintain a highly educated audience for long.

The question for advertisers, however, is whether they benefit from publications gaming the current system of paying for ad space based on traffic. Does their churning out mockable stuff really sell your product? When a lot of people click just to see if the article is as stupid as the headline makes it sound, does that boost your brand?