I have just posited a new theory of marketing

This New Scientist article is headlined thusly -

Half the universe’s missing matter has just been finally found

When I first saw this headline on Hacker News, I was immediately drawn in. Given my recent interest in marketing, I wondered what it was about such clickbait that actually makes it work.

I think the most important word in the headline is not one of the heavy weight ones. It is not "missing matter" or "found" or "universe". I suspect it is just "just".

Do you rubberneck? As a kid, if your sister was getting yelled at by your parents, did you gawk or did you walk? If you were at your work desk and someone said a marching band was walking by downstairs, would you stop whatever you were doing to look? Do you simply walk past a wedding photoshoot or do you stop and stare (however subtly)?

The common answer to these questions that yes, we love rubbernecking. We like observing things live. We are a curious species and nothing piques our curiosity more than stuff happening right in front of us.

The word "just" adds a sense of immediacy, of something that happened a minute ago, of a living, breathing, evolving piece of breaking news that you gawk at.

The word "just" that the inventors of clickbait discovered has no antidote because it appeals to who we are as a species.

The only way to resist the lure of "just" is to consciously recognize that what you are currently engaged is more important than prurient rubbernecking.