Titles of sections in Buddhist texts show us what clickbait looked like two thousand years ago. Here’s a sample, from Milindapañha:

Beyond the titles, the concepts themselves are numbered (the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path) so that the people reciting and hearing them could remember them in a pre-written world.

Numbered lists was old memetic technology by then, Hindu artifacts had plenty (the four varnas, the five fires, the seven sages, the thirty-three gods).

But listicles were when the Buddhists went full buzzfeed.