Five [somethings] that cause [something]!

  1. Enough already with the “listy” titles: “Five behaviors that lead to early dementia,” or “Three foods that cause cancer,” or “Ten habits of highly effective leaders,” or “Seven policies that increase church giving,” or…
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    Back when I first read that popular blog post on “Eight ways to increase blog traffic” (or whatever it was actually titled), and it explained how people go for short, definitive lists that make everything sound simple, and how titles that hint at that kind of list really get the click traffic, I halfheartedly tried to get on board.
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    Over time, I even made some meager efforts to title some posts that way, but a quick scroll through my blog shows I was not consistent at it—yet I was never “against” it.
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    Still, come on! The “listy” titles have become so prolific and so annoying that I am now crying “uncle.” Enough. Please, bloggers and click-bait sites, get back to being creative with real titles.
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  2. And don’t even get me started on those other click bait titles such as “She was [something] until THIS happened!” Argh, ugh, and yuck. I have come to despise such things.
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  3. While I am at it, Christians and/or conservatives: can we please, for the love of all that is good and holy and decent, stop posting links to supposedly conservative articles that display, in the advertisements, “gratuitous cleavage” / wanton near nakedness and generally raunchy, nasty stuff?
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  4. And, Christians and/or conservatives: can we please stop linking (without any warning) to videos that contain seriously bad language? Yeah, that would be great.
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  5. Oh, boy. I seem to have compiled a definitive list of four items, yea five items if we count this last bit that doesn’t fit, but yet we could pretend it does. No, wait, the click-bait people do that too, whenever the 13th item in their list of 13 items is not a 13th item, but just a screen that says “you’ve reached the last item, so now click here.” Yeah, I guess I am now guilty, too.  (See what I did there?)    😉

So—whatever shall I title this post?