Clickhole, a new publication from the team behind satirical news company The Onion, is a spoof website that has BuzzFeed, UpWorthy and The Daily Mail squarely in its sights.
The site parodies social news website that trade in picture galleries, quizzes and "listicles" – articles made up of pictures, factoids and gifs. It also mocks the growing prevalence of "clickbait" headlines – those teasing titles that are written specifically to entice you to click on them.
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The New York Times suggests that the site's "animating spirit" may be Jessica, an eight-year-old girl who, in a video on the site, explains why someone might end up on Clickhole. She explains: “You want me to say something adorable because, well, you're lonely. And you really just need something to fill the emptiness you're feeling deep down inside. Just remember, no matter how many videos you watch, or how many lists you read, you’re still going to feel all alone".
Even the site's advertising is tongue-in-cheek. On the right-hand side of the homepage sit ads in a box marked "CashHole", and at the bottom of each story, readers will encounter sponsored articles from other sites titled: "Poor Websites In Need Of Clicks".
The site is a direct response to the current direction of online news, says Stuff.co.nz: "Clickhole highlights not only the vacuousness of much of what people share on social media, but the media’s cynical (if understandable) response to an advertiser-driven incentive structure that rewards page views over substance".
In an email interview with the New York Times, Clickhole's editor, Jermaine Affonso, said: "we see the ideal ClickHole reader as a hollow shell who exists purely to click on our content and then share that content with other hollow shells … We want the future to completely lack believability. That’s what ClickHole is all about".
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