Probably not. That was a clickbait headline. But then again it might be. The internet's short digital history is littered with the bones of trends that seemed to game some system or human behavior and that couldn't miss. Until they suddenly imploded. And badly.
Adland has an interesting post on the decline and fall of Gawker with larger implications.
The Gawker Quantcast data shows a huge drop in traffic at Gawker's sites. This comes as no surprise to anyone here at Adland, and y'all who have been paying attention, as Vice's traffic has collapsed as well, and Buzzfeed missed its revenue target by a lot.
The Gawker traffic card shows that March of 2016, with 59.3 unique U.S. visits the traffic went down 10 percent from the preceding March, which posted 64 million visits. Gawker's all-time high was a steady traffic stream of aroind 80 million, which was in August 2014, you can watch the decline hit after October of 2014. It's been a steady stroll downhill ever since.
Gawker is obnoxious as anything, but Vice and Buzzfeed are nearly as bad in some ways. And perhaps we're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Or maybe just the train at the end of it.
I have noticed a slight decline in obnoxious viral headlines. And the system has been so thoroughly abused by bad fake satire sites, hate sites fronting for various political candidates and Clickhole that the time may just be at hand.