I'd suspect it's more a matter of people enjoying the sense of validation they get from an article which tells them that the low standards they're accustomed to from work are good, actually.

Is it really the case? Could it maybe be that these clickbeity titles are upvoted and comment on more, regardless of the questionable added value to the community "burried" deep inside?

I feel that a lot of discussions on those clickbaity titles are based on the title alone

I'd put it differently: HackerNews has an immune system to defend against low-quality submissions, including articles with clickbait titles, but it's imperfect. (As dang puts it, we're trying for something different than internet default here. [0])

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29153668