Why is clickbait the equivalent of kryptonite here?

Because it deserves to be in most cases. The clickbait headline usually leads to a fluff piece that jerks your chain and tells you little or nothing of substance.

It's the opposite of what people come here for.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickbait seems a decent summary.

> Clickbait is a text or a thumbnail link that is designed to attract attention and to entice users to follow that link and read, view, or listen to the linked piece of online content, being typically deceptive, sensationalized, or otherwise misleading.

I don't know people who like being mislead or deceived (outside of, say, a magic show).

Is this a troll? After 49,480+ karma points I'd think the preference for intellectually honest titles and subjects would be clear.

It's leads to a very low signal-to-noise ratio.

Optimally, an article is formatted like a scientific paper: the title is a one sentence summary, followed by the abstract (a one paragraph summary), followed by the nitty gritty details.

Clickbait is pretty much the inverse, a lot of text with low information content.

Because, by defintion, clickbait uses hyperbole and deception to get clicks. It's priority isn't the reader. It's noise. There's already too much noise.

Life is short.