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Because "in a day" carries the implication "Man makes $2500 every day doing this one simple trick". That's why it's in the headline. "Man made $2500 doing X o
by alex_c 8y ago
Because "in a day" carries the implication "Man makes $2500 every day doing this one simple trick". That's why it's in the headline.
"Man made $2500 doing X once, never to be repeated again" or "Man made $2500 in a year doing X" might be equally true headlines, but a lot less attention grabbing.
- lotyrin 8y ago"$XXXX in a day" does not carry any such implication to myself, "$XXXX a day" would, but that phrasing seems to have been deliberately avoided -- and even had it been used I'd have to seriously investigate the context of such a headline before concluding the editor that has chosen such a headline thinks that this is something sustainable, scalable, and robust to sudden competition (... given such a thing is quite implausible in general).
- alex_c 8y agoI stand by what I wrote. The human mind is generally not that rational and literal, especially when scanning a long list of headlines. The brain sees "$2500", "a day", subconsciously makes a connection that $2500 is more than the reader typically makes in a day, interest is created, link is clicked. No one proceeds to conclude that man is earning $912,500/year, but the connection is made and it's quite intentional from the headline writer. Here's another example: "Man makes $2500 in a day by buying a lottery ticket". That is a weird sentence, because buying a winning lottery ticket is a discrete, non-reproducible event - so why include "in a day", unless it is to suggest something to the reader? Or another one: "Man makes $2500 in a day by winning competition after preparing for months" - you can see where I'm going with this.