I have no concrete proof that this is happening, but it sure feels like it from time to time. It's not uncommon to see articles chart to the front page with provocative headlines that, upon clicking through, bear little resemblance to the headlines or body of the linked content.
Gut-level guesstimate, but the following titling strategies seem to work disproportionately well:
1) Pointed, rhetorical questions (as much as we all claim to hate them)
2) "How I..." titles (usually some legitimate merit to these posts, but if one were so inclined to game the system...)
3) Contrarian declaratives, usually about popular topics. (Hypothetical example: "Facebook is not a social network." This will generate a lot of blind upvotes, plus at least a few knee-jerk comments in opposition).
In fairness to HN, the content actually matters here. I can't say the same for a lot of the subreddits I browse, where blind upvoting based on title alone is a lot more rampant. It's pretty hard to crack the front page with lousy but well-clickbait-titled content here, though we've all seen it done before (and it seems to happen at least once a week).
I wouldn't say it's too much harder than reddit. The key is long form content.
Legitimate commentary will take longer to flow in, and allow for knee jerk / blind influence to last longer from original submission time.
IMO the beet would be a clickbait title for a long article that starts contrarion, but ends on a neutral note.
Rational/logical people will take less offense b/c they're more likely to read the neutral perspectives and others will blind vote/comment based on title and first couple of sentences of the article.
Gut-level guesstimate, but the following titling strategies seem to work disproportionately well:
1) Pointed, rhetorical questions (as much as we all claim to hate them)
2) "How I..." titles (usually some legitimate merit to these posts, but if one were so inclined to game the system...)
3) Contrarian declaratives, usually about popular topics. (Hypothetical example: "Facebook is not a social network." This will generate a lot of blind upvotes, plus at least a few knee-jerk comments in opposition).
In fairness to HN, the content actually matters here. I can't say the same for a lot of the subreddits I browse, where blind upvoting based on title alone is a lot more rampant. It's pretty hard to crack the front page with lousy but well-clickbait-titled content here, though we've all seen it done before (and it seems to happen at least once a week).