4 ms·
Ask HN: The unreasonable effectiveness of certain headlines on Hacker News
Certain headlings work really well such as:
The unreasonable effectiveness of X
n myths that people believe about X
These are the hacker news equivalents of
"X happened. You won't believe what happened next."
"Do X with this one weird trick."
My question is:
1. Do you have other examples of these repeating, and successful headlines?
2. Why do they work?
- draw_down 7y agoI don’t know but the “falsehoods developers believe about x” drives me batty. Such a shit headline.
- latexr 7y agoI don’t recall seeing many of those on Hacker News, but it may be that they have been renamed by the time I get to them. What you’re asking about is known as “clickbait”. Search for that term and you’ll find plenty of information. They work by putting us in a state of anticipation, hijacking our dopamine reward system.
- eb0la 7y ago"$(PropietarySoftwareCO) [is now using|adopts|champions] $(OpenSourceTechnology)" This works because there is an implict conflict.
- sgillen 7y agoFor the two examples you listed I think they work because they imply that the article has some quick tips to “level up” as a developer. Either by adding a new and powerful tool to their belt, or by dispelling some previous false notion they have.
- eb0la 7y agoAnother patterns: - $(SHINY_NEW_TECH) [beats|as a better|replaces] $(OLD_TECH) - $(OLD_OR_BORING_TECH) beats $(SHINY_NEW_TECH) (because) - $(OLD__TECH) refuses to die
- bjourne 7y ago"Air pollution is a big deal" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21560916 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21560916 Didn't work very well. Then someone posted "Air Pollution Reduces IQ, a Lot" https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/11/air-pollution-reduces-iq-a-lot.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/11/ai... and it scored well despite being just a rehash of Patrick Collison's blog post. :) The moderator dang since then has changed the url and title to "The cognitive costs of air pollution" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21565624 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21565624 Amazing! over 1000 points!
- psv1 7y ago[Some-software-tool-or-library-that-you-already-know-and-use]... written in Rust.
- F-0X 7y agoGreat articles for when you want to know how it works but want the code to play hard to get.
- Isamu 7y ago>The unreasonable effectiveness of X These are just allusions to classic "unreasonable effectiveness" papers, probably starting with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of_Mathematics_in_the_Natural_Sciences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness... >n myths that people believe about X Again there are well-known articles that specifically address programmer myths and short-sightedness, generally a good topic. Many people remember the original, well written articles and want to read more of the same.
- Isamu 7y agoNot quite the same as click bait.