Clickbait and the Ancient Art of Master Baiting

---

So I’m on the toilet again ¹ scrolling through my phone like it’s a bodily function—which, let’s be honest, it basically is at this point—and I have this thought that makes me laugh so hard I almost drop the damn thing in the bowl:

When exactly did we all become fishermen?

Not the romantic kind with weathered hands and stories about the one that got away. The other kind. The desperate kind. Standing in this vast digital ocean casting our lines over and over, hoping something—anything—will bite. Everyone’s a master baiter now.²

LinkedIn has transformed into this bizarre performance space where people in business casual are basically doing interpretive dance about their morning routines. “I wake up at 4:30 AM to meditate, journal, and drink something green that probably tastes like lawn clippings!” Cool. I wake up when my body decides it’s done pretending to sleep, eat leftover adobo straight from the container while standing in front of the fridge, and somehow still manage to do my job. Where’s MY motivational speaking circuit?

The thing is… I get it. I fucking get it.

There’s this woman I used to know. Back when she was regular-person broke, the kind where you’re doing mental gymnastics in the grocery store trying to figure out if you can afford both rice AND electricity this month.³ She worried about normal human shit—whether her boyfriend was cheating (he probably was), whether she’d ever afford to move out of her parents’ house (unclear), whether any of this mattered in the grand scheme of things (definitely not, but also somehow yes).

Real problems. The kind that don’t come with a 30-day money-back guarantee or a Facebook group full of other people pretending they’ve figured it out.

Now she’s apparently a millionaire. Selling courses on “Unleashing Your Inner Goddess CEO Boss Babe Quantum Manifestation Journey” or whatever word salad the algorithm is currently rewarding. And here’s where it gets complicated—maybe she really DID figure something out? Maybe she genuinely wants to help people?

But I can’t tell anymore.

That’s the fucked up part. I literally cannot distinguish between someone who discovered a real thing that works and someone who’s just really good at performing the discovery of a thing that works. It’s like trying to figure out if you’re actually hungry or just bored—similar symptoms, completely different problems, and either way you’re probably going to eat something you’ll regret.

Everyone’s a dealer now. But instead of shabu ⁴ they’re peddling hope wrapped in pastel Instagram graphics and Canva templates. My cousin’s got a cryptocurrency course. My neighbor—I watched her stop mid-jog yesterday to prop her phone against the fence so she could record herself jogging. Just… re-jogging the jog she was already jogging. Performance within performance, turtles all the way down.⁵ My old high school teacher—the one who used to fall asleep during exams—is now a life coach specializing in “authentic transformation.”

The simulation is glitching.

“Use code BLESSED69 for 20% off your spiritual awakening!” they scream from their rented Fortuners parked outside condos they probably can’t actually afford but the AESTHETIC is immaculate and isn’t that what matters? The vibes are so convincing even I start wondering if I should monetize my quarter-life crisis.⁶

Here’s what I think is happening: We’ve created this system where the only way to survive is to become bait. To make yourself clickable. To optimize every moment of your existence for engagement. You’re not a person anymore—you’re content. You’re a thumbnail. You’re seven seconds of dopamine delivery wrapped in aspirational aesthetics.

The news isn’t even pretending anymore. It’s just robots writing about other robots writing about tweets from bots arguing with other bots about shit that probably never happened. I saw a headline yesterday: “BREAKING: Thing That Might Happen Could Possibly Maybe Occur!”

Pulitzer-worthy stuff right there.

Remember when newspapers had horoscopes and comics? Now EVERYTHING is comedy but the kind that makes you laugh until you can’t breathe and you realize you’re not sure if you’re having fun or having a breakdown or if there’s even a difference anymore.

I’m sitting here, fishing through this digital septic tank, looking for one authentic thing that doesn’t come with a subscribe button or a countdown timer going TICK TICK TICK like the world’s most aggressive biological clock except instead of “your fertility is declining” it’s “OFFER EXPIRES IN 3 HOURS!”

Listen. If your transformation program expires faster than milk in Manila heat, it probably wasn’t that life-changing to begin with.

We used to tell stories around actual fires. The kind that burned your eyes and made your clothes smell like smoke and memory. Now we huddle around phone screens that give us neck problems and make us forget what our own hands feel like when they’re not swiping something.

The performance never stops.

Everyone’s performing being human instead of just… being human. You know when you’re really, genuinely constipated (speaking from current experience), you’re not thinking about your personal brand or engagement metrics or whether this moment is on-brand enough to post. You’re just trying to take a decent shit and maybe find something real to read that doesn’t want to sell you anything.⁷

Maybe we’re evolving into something new. Digital creatures that feed on likes and shares instead of actual food. Vampires sucking engagement out of each other until we’re all just empty profiles with perfect lighting and zero substance and a newsletter nobody asked for.

Or maybe—and this feels more true—we’re just scared.

Scared of being boring in a world that scrolls past boring in 0.3 seconds. Scared of being broke in a system that equates wealth with worth. Scared of being forgotten in this endless feed of everyone else’s carefully curated highlight reels where nobody ever shows the part where they’re crying in the shower or eating cereal for dinner three days in a row or wondering if any of this matters.

So we perform. We optimize. We master bait.⁸

We throw our hooks into the water and pray something—someone—bites. Validates us. Proves we exist in a way that matters. Even though deep down we know the fish are just other people throwing their own hooks, all of us fishing in the same exhausted ocean, hoping to catch something we can’t even name.

But here’s the thing that makes me laugh-cry on my toilet throne: I’m still scrolling. Still hoping to find something that doesn’t want anything from me except maybe to exist in the same digital space for a few seconds without trying to optimize my life or sell me a course on optimizing my life or optimize the optimization.

Maybe that’s the real master baiting—keeping us all here, fishing forever, never quite catching anything but never quite able to stop trying.

My toilet paper’s running out.

Again.

Story of my fucking life.

---

P.S. Like and subscribe! Just kidding. Or am I? Actually don’t. Unless you want to. I don’t care. Do whatever makes you happy.

P.P.S. Except maybe put your phone down and go touch some grass. Not that I’m judging from my bathroom throne where I’ve been sitting so long my legs have achieved a new state of numbness that might actually be enlightenment.

P.P.P.S. I need to buy more toilet paper. This is a metaphor for something but I’m too tired to figure out what.

P.P.P.P.S. The woman I mentioned earlier? I hope she really did figure it out. I hope she’s genuinely happy and helping people and not just another person drowning in the same ocean pretending she’s swimming. I hope we all figure it out eventually. Or at least find better things to do on the toilet.