It’s a strange world online and Ingrid Conley-Abrams — a school library director in New York City — wanted to prep her students as best she could.
As a part of a lesson on media literacy and bias, Conley-Abrams created an optional assignment where kids made their own versions of clickbait. The results were delightful, brilliant, and, at times, slightly creepy.
Conley-Abrams tweeted out some of the schoolwork and it went very viral for obvious reasons.
Just finished the 4th grade lesson plan on clickbait, and I gave the 4th graders the opportunity to create their own clickbait headlines and, honestly, I couldn’t have imagined anything this epic. pic.twitter.com/gRtOaHjPeq
— ᵐˣ. ᶦⁿᵍʳᶦᵈ (@MagpieLibrarian) September 17, 2020
Image: Ingrid Conley-Abrams
Conley-Abrams told me in a phone conversation that the same (frankly genius) child made both the dog and coffin clickbait articles. She said she particularly enjoyed the dog one.
Image: Ingrid Conley-Abrams
“That one with the use of very on-brand clickbait punctuation, you know, inexplicable punctuation and too much of it,” she said. “I thought that genius and I would love to click on that. I’d love to know about secret dog meetings.”
Personally, I loved: “u think ur loved ones stay in here NO WAY.” Haunting, beautiful, vaguely threatening. It’s all those things.
Conley-Abrams also passed along a few other works from her fourth graders that didn’t get posted to Twitter. They, too, are awesome.
Oh no.
Image: Ingrid conley-abrams
During the NBA Finals? Wow.
Image: Ingrid Conley-Abrams
Image: Ingrid Conley-Abrams
The LeBron James one honestly just reads like actual sports clickbait. And I really need to know what’s up with the turkey in the Snow White one. They’re just so good.
“These little clickbait mockups they’re so creative — someone online accused me of making these up myself — and the one with a coffin, there’s just no way. I’m just not that creative,” Conley-Abrams told me. “But even the ones that are creepy there’s something really joyful about them. I think if I can have any elements of joy in my virtual classroom right now, [the kids] need and so do I. I very much, honestly, needed the laughs.”
Conley-Abrams said she felt it was necessary to teach kids how to spot bad info online and that school libraries all over do the same.
“I mean, if adults my age are susceptible to clickbait that means that nine and 10 year olds are too,” she said.