Clickbait articles are never as interesting as their headlines, but Wally bites every time

I am almost helpless when it comes to clickbait.

Clickbait is websites that offer titillating headlines that are always more interesting than what is on the site.

Once you click on a site, you automatically are offered a hundred more similar things so that you easily could spend all day looking at that junk. It’s like M&Ms. You say you only want a handful, but in no time at all you’ve eaten an entire bag.

I know I couldn’t resist, “10 things (Baby) Boomers say that aren’t true anymore.” It turned out to be things that my parents told me and probably their parents told them. My favorite was “In my day, we had real music.” I don’t know how many times I heard that from my father and even from an older brother and sister.

Even now I think it occasionally.

“Five musicians who hated the Beatles,” “Two songs that Ringo wrote for the Beatles that you probably didn’t know,” or the “12 worst pieces of advice that Baby Boomers still give,” sound more interesting than they are.

Some of them just don’t cut the mustard, which might head a list of sayings that no longer make sense. The “13 best comforting dog beds of 2023.” There are 13? I don’t know because I skipped that one. Or the “13 most expensive cars that NBA players own.”

I found “9 things that will be gone with Boomers,” interesting. Fine chinaware and writing checks are a couple. Nobody’s kids want their china anymore. You can buy sets in thrift stores, if you really want some, for a few bucks.

I don’t write many checks. It is a good thing because the price of a pad of checks, like so many other things, is ridiculous.

Some predictions make sense, like the disappearance of traditional funerals, as they continue to shoot up in price. Dedicating a lot of ground to bury dead bodies doesn’t make as much sense as cremation or even composting.

They don’t just pick on Boomers. Millennials, Gen Xers and Gen Zers also come under fire. Not everything is negative. There was a site that offered, “10 pieces of advice from Boomers that still hold true.”

They predict the demise of cursive writing. I won’t miss it. Mine was never very legible and has gotten worse as I use it less and my hands age.

What they need is a list of things that disappeared and then made a comeback, like vinyl phonograph records. Or a list of things that have evolved, like solitaire, which is much better on a computer.

And then there could be a list of things which seem to be eternal, like bingo in nursing homes. Or nursing homes themselves, for that matter.