Whenever the subject of “viral” content or clickbait journalism comes up — usually in a blog post or news story about either Upworthy or BuzzFeed, or one of their many imitators — there’s a tendency to blame the phenomenon on the internet, as though there was no such thing as clickbait-style journalism until the social web came along. But all the internet and social media have done is increase the supply, and probably the speed — that kind of content is as old as humanity.

Lapham’s Quarterly came up with some relatively ancient examples in a recent post entitled “Going Viral in the 19th Century.” At that time, it was commonplace for newspapers and magazines to include silly or amusing anecdotes, trivia, jokes and bad poetry as a way of lightening up the news. Newspaper editor Frederick Hudson was apparently driven to despair by these light-hearted items, which ran under…