By George Tarabay

“You won’t believe what this girl does next”

“He started filming, and suddenly…”

“Things you did not know about Heath Ledger”

Ah, click-baits: They type. You click. They happy!

Ever wanted to physically reach through your screen in a time-traveling warp, moments after you were click-baited, and punch the person who posted it? No? Then you and I are different people, obviously, unless you are a rich, slim, handsome guy, then we’re literally two different people.

In my humble opinion, click-baiting is the modern form of “Knock & Ditch”. You ‘knock’ on someone’s attention center, they click to let you in, and the content is not what you expect behind the door. Yet, this is not where click-baiting originates from. Its origin arrives from a literal concept we all use on a daily basis and without realizing it: verbiage.

In my arrogant opinion, this is how click-baiting began. When the first human spoke (I am assuming genders here from personal experience), she told a story of how she went to the creek, grabbed a rock, hit a bison that was chill-axing on the head, and killed it. However, she noticed that people around her did not interact with her story, as they had more pressing things to worry about, such as the fact that no one has discovered fire yet. Then, her Eureka (“bagagaha” in Medieval Times) moment. She painted a big painting on the cave wall depicting the infamous incident but with two small twists: the bison is attacking her now, and it was so big that it could have sniffed her through its nostrils. And voila, her female friends gathered around the painting to hear the story.

At that very moment, the wheels in her brains (although the actual wheel was not invented yet) went into overdrive and she spat the words that would forever change our internet history:

“Oh my gosh, like, you won’t believe, like, what happened.”

And from there, she heightened every aspect of the story, using and inventing bigger words to depict the gravity of every situation this story encompasses, until she ended the story to the roaring applause of her friends who told her she should have her own reality show.

And ever since then, man-kind has been using words in the wrong denomination to gain attention and to put themselves in the lime-light.

When you see a friend after a long time, don’t use words like “Oh! You lost a ton of weight!” Because seriously, your friend did not weigh a ton and two hundred pounds. They just weighed two hundred and now they weigh substantially less. That kind of manifestation of our emotions can really be damaging to others, either physically or emotionally. I mean, that friend probably went and indulged on four pizzas because he heard “lost” and “tons” and thought subliminally “four pizzas will not make me gain a ton back.”

Or my favorite: “I woke up today, tried starting my car and it just didn’t start…I’m so depressed”.

Honey, honey, honey. You are not depressed. You are just inconvenienced. How shallow is the imprint of your soul on this universe’s canvas, that if a car did not start, would lead to your inevitable depression?

I mean, shouldn’t the sentence really be “I woke up today, tried starting my car and it just didn’t start…I’m so going to be late but I guess that’s the price I have to pay for not giving myself extra time to leave and betting on a machine made by erroneous creatures not to fault and break down?”

Click-baits are nothing more than someone listening to Kim Kardashian speak and think, “I can use the way she talks to make money.”

So, if you’re like me, happy and jolly and click-baits throw you off, there are two things that you can do:

1 – Shut up and move on, because really there is no need to make a big fuss about you having to spend 0.89 calories to move your fingers and click on the track pad.

2 – You can start changing the way you tell your stories, because it’s as bad as click-baits.

What I wrote in the last line of this article…Well, you’ve read it twice already.

George Tarabay is a local radio host, comedian, and marketing expert. For his latest updates, follow him on Instagram @GeorgeTarabay. For more comic relief, visit Facebook.com/Georgethecomic or scan this page using the Layar App!