Are clickbait headlines like manipulative worship?

I'm grateful to Amy Frkyholm for her thoughtful response to my media column on clickbait. I have a religious autobiography similar to Amy's: raised in a highly emotional evangelical/charismatic church, which I left in young adulthood for high liturgy. My response to liturgical forms of worship was very much the same feeling of relief and freedom within structure that Amy describes so well. I appreciate, and in many ways share, her experience with and insight into the pitfalls of coerced emotionality—in worship, church groups, or online.

I'm not sure, however, that the parallel between clickbait and worship really works. Part of the (potential) coercion of embodied worship experiences is the corporate, performative nature of them. At least for me, it was watching others and being watched in my responses that set up the "double cynicism" Amy so powerfully describes. Digital social networks create different kinds of performative community, but I'd argue they operate pretty differently from the closed community of evangelical worship.

For example, what really attracts me to a clickbait link is not just the catchy headline, and it's definitely not the promise of a definitive emotional response. It is watching the same post show up on my Facebook feed multiple times from a variety of people. The more people post it, the more I am curious. If a really diverse group of people from my friend network posts it (friends from high school alongside activists and graduate school colleagues), my curiosity grows. What I'm seeking, I think, is not so much the promised emotional response, but to know what all the fuss is about.