Since the morning of Saturday, the social media site X has been flooded with images asking the users to "Click Here." By the evening, the trend was trending enough to merit a closer look. An image with a plain white background with "Click Here" written in bold black font and accompanied by a diagonally downward pointing arrow was suddenly showing up in far too many feeds to be ignored. Even for many of those who did click, it left a large number of user puzzled as to what is the image, the purpose of it all about.
Where are you supposed to click?
The diagonally downward arrow points towards the "Alt Text" or Alternative text section. The new feature in question allows users to add a text description to the photos they upload on the social media platform. What makes the feature stand apart and take a shot at being more inclusive is the fact that it can help the visually challenged to understand the image with Braille language and text-to-speech recognition.
The alt text feature allows photo descriptions up to 420 characters. While not a new feature as it introduced in 2016, it gained significant traction again in the past couple of days. The feature was an effort on the part of the social media site, formerly called Twitter, to maximize its reach and be accessible to the widest possible audience.
With elections due in a couple of weeks, the BJP, the Congress and other political parties hopped on to the Click Here trend. However, like with many new trends, the feature has been criticized especially by people with visual impairment. The trend has also been repurposed to make jokes and memes. Among those questioning about the trend and the feature were Shiv Sena leader Priyanka Chaturvedi, while the BJP, Congress and AAP hopped onto it. "What is the click here pic story? My timeline is full of it?" wrote Priyanka Chaturvedi.
Many users commented, asking if anyone could explain what the trend was all about, a flood of memes also took over. "I will not click," posted a netizen in jest. Another remarked, how the trend sounded nothing short of unsolicited links asking everyone to "click here".
