4 ms·

> I once told a friend that there are a lot of books I enjoyed as one enjoys a piece of candy After 8 paragraphs of this sort of thing we get to the book The

> I once told a friend that there are a lot of books I enjoyed as one enjoys a piece of candy After 8 paragraphs of this sort of thing we get to the book The Tim Tebow CFL Chronicles follows the adventures of a fictionalized version of Tim Tebow who, brokenhearted over his inability to make it as an NFL quarterback, arrives in Toronto to join the Argonauts What school of writing is teaching writers to bury the lede in a page or two of personal anecdotes?

arbitrage 5y ago
The one that teaches you that your article doesn't get impressions if readers don't scroll through it. That is, you don't get paid for writing well. Thanks, Capitalism!
- labrador 5y ago
  Your comment sparked some interesting thoughts and when that happens I often think of the small farm I grew up on with my grandparents, because you learn a lot of life's most basic lessons working on a farm. The rhythms of nature enforce a particular and unforgiving honesty on a young impressionable mind. I learned my first thoughts aren't always correct. Like grandpa used to say "truth is in the rain." Grandma would cook Apple pies and the scent would reach me in the field when I was hungry from hard work. I'd come running and she would exclaim "I know how much you love my pies by how you come running!" So there's truth in pies as well as rain. As I thought about my reply to your comment, I thought back to the time someone sold me oregano in college claiming it was marijuana. I was mad, but that person taught me a valuable lesson about honesty and I vowed I would always try to be an honest person. After much reflection and with a little help from memories of my ex-wife pointing out all they ways I wasn't honest, all minor complaints mind you, I realized that my response to your criticism of capitalism upset me so that I was probably going to make an emotional response. I learned not to make emotional responses at a retreat in Central America where we took some kind of psychedelic and did cognitive behavioral therapy from a man I'll call Gunter (not his real name) who was an Austrian fellow who came to this country to organize a coup and stayed after it's success as one of the spiritual leaders of the new communist state. After repeated attempts by him to get me in bed with him, I concluded the communism wasn't good for people and had turned this nice man into a hedonist. So getting back to my comment, capitalism is the least worse system so we'd probably better stick with it and try and curb the worst excesses of narcissism and self-aggrandizement that it engenders with it's stress on the individual self and ego. This author is correct to attempt to make money under a capitalist system, but is using unintelligent means to accomplish it. I understand not everyone is a great writer and has to resort to tricks, but that's why it pays to hire a editor, whose services the capitalist system incentivizes!
  - mehlmao 5y ago
    Is this a GPT-3 comment?
    - labrador 5y ago
      No but you just gave me an idea. I could hide behind GPT-3 in the future and claim that any of my writing that upsets people was actually my AI and I should probably tweak it some more. No offense was intended.
    - Avshalom 5y ago
      It's a joke about burying the lede
      - labrador 5y ago
        If that's not clear then I need to work on getting better about making jokes
        marssaxman 5y ago
        I thought it was a really amusing parody.
- Spinnaker_ 5y ago
  The only way this author gets paid is if you subscribe to his substack. Impressions mean nothing. I think it was very creative and well written.
Mountain_Skies 5y ago
This type of thing is increasing on YouTube too and rather than fast forward until I get to the meat of the video, I just stop and move on. I get that they're trying to fluff up a small bit of content into something larger for increased revenue but I've gotten to my breaking point in my willingness to tolerate such games. Hopefully others get to that point too and this type of behavior starts having negative returns.
- labrador 5y ago
  I'll never get used to lectures where first the most minor person says how fantastic people are that follow, then the mid level person adds their two cents about how cool the following people are, followed by the most senior person singing the praises of the lecturer followed by the lecturer who is required to say how he or she doesn't deserve any of that praise but would be happy still if you bought their book. The longest this took before the lecture started was 29 minutes, although most of the time it's about 5. You know, Netflix figured out that everyone skips the intros to live comedy shows. People who put on lectures should think about this.
  - readthenotes1 5y ago
    It is part of the ancient tradition of persuasion that the Greeks used and appropriated by many other cultures because it seemed to work well: Ethos, pathos, logos. What you were enduring was the ethos part, where other people tout the credentials of the speaker so that you will be more likely to accept the The following propaganda.
    - labrador 5y ago
      That explains my instinct to skip to the speaker so I can listen without prejudice. I only look people up after they say something interesting so I can see what kind of axe they have to grind before fully accepting what they say. Thanks for the explanation.
Spinnaker_ 5y ago
Hopefully a popular school that turns out lots of writers! I read a lot of book reviews and this was much more enjoyable than 99% of them.
cookie_monsta 5y ago
I thought the same thing. I think it started with the recipe writers and caught on from there.
obloid 5y ago
I've noticed a similar thing with popular reporting of "medical mysteries". Authors tend to wait until the end of the article for the big reveal of the diagnosis. As opposed to the actual medical case reports they're usually basing the story on which will be titled "An unusual case of X syndrome" or something similar. So you know right off the bat if it's even a case you're interested in reading about.

arbitrage 5y ago

The one that teaches you that your article doesn't get impressions if readers don't scroll through it. That is, you don't get paid for writing well. Thanks, Capitalism!

labrador 5y ago
Your comment sparked some interesting thoughts and when that happens I often think of the small farm I grew up on with my grandparents, because you learn a lot of life's most basic lessons working on a farm. The rhythms of nature enforce a particular and unforgiving honesty on a young impressionable mind. I learned my first thoughts aren't always correct. Like grandpa used to say "truth is in the rain." Grandma would cook Apple pies and the scent would reach me in the field when I was hungry from hard work. I'd come running and she would exclaim "I know how much you love my pies by how you come running!" So there's truth in pies as well as rain. As I thought about my reply to your comment, I thought back to the time someone sold me oregano in college claiming it was marijuana. I was mad, but that person taught me a valuable lesson about honesty and I vowed I would always try to be an honest person. After much reflection and with a little help from memories of my ex-wife pointing out all they ways I wasn't honest, all minor complaints mind you, I realized that my response to your criticism of capitalism upset me so that I was probably going to make an emotional response. I learned not to make emotional responses at a retreat in Central America where we took some kind of psychedelic and did cognitive behavioral therapy from a man I'll call Gunter (not his real name) who was an Austrian fellow who came to this country to organize a coup and stayed after it's success as one of the spiritual leaders of the new communist state. After repeated attempts by him to get me in bed with him, I concluded the communism wasn't good for people and had turned this nice man into a hedonist. So getting back to my comment, capitalism is the least worse system so we'd probably better stick with it and try and curb the worst excesses of narcissism and self-aggrandizement that it engenders with it's stress on the individual self and ego. This author is correct to attempt to make money under a capitalist system, but is using unintelligent means to accomplish it. I understand not everyone is a great writer and has to resort to tricks, but that's why it pays to hire a editor, whose services the capitalist system incentivizes!
- mehlmao 5y ago
  Is this a GPT-3 comment?
  - labrador 5y ago
    No but you just gave me an idea. I could hide behind GPT-3 in the future and claim that any of my writing that upsets people was actually my AI and I should probably tweak it some more. No offense was intended.
  - Avshalom 5y ago
    It's a joke about burying the lede
    - labrador 5y ago
      If that's not clear then I need to work on getting better about making jokes
      - marssaxman 5y ago
        I thought it was a really amusing parody.
Spinnaker_ 5y ago
The only way this author gets paid is if you subscribe to his substack. Impressions mean nothing. I think it was very creative and well written.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago

This type of thing is increasing on YouTube too and rather than fast forward until I get to the meat of the video, I just stop and move on. I get that they're trying to fluff up a small bit of content into something larger for increased revenue but I've gotten to my breaking point in my willingness to tolerate such games. Hopefully others get to that point too and this type of behavior starts having negative returns.

labrador 5y ago
I'll never get used to lectures where first the most minor person says how fantastic people are that follow, then the mid level person adds their two cents about how cool the following people are, followed by the most senior person singing the praises of the lecturer followed by the lecturer who is required to say how he or she doesn't deserve any of that praise but would be happy still if you bought their book. The longest this took before the lecture started was 29 minutes, although most of the time it's about 5. You know, Netflix figured out that everyone skips the intros to live comedy shows. People who put on lectures should think about this.
- readthenotes1 5y ago
  It is part of the ancient tradition of persuasion that the Greeks used and appropriated by many other cultures because it seemed to work well: Ethos, pathos, logos. What you were enduring was the ethos part, where other people tout the credentials of the speaker so that you will be more likely to accept the The following propaganda.
  - labrador 5y ago
    That explains my instinct to skip to the speaker so I can listen without prejudice. I only look people up after they say something interesting so I can see what kind of axe they have to grind before fully accepting what they say. Thanks for the explanation.

Spinnaker_ 5y ago

Hopefully a popular school that turns out lots of writers! I read a lot of book reviews and this was much more enjoyable than 99% of them.

cookie_monsta 5y ago

I thought the same thing. I think it started with the recipe writers and caught on from there.

obloid 5y ago

I've noticed a similar thing with popular reporting of "medical mysteries". Authors tend to wait until the end of the article for the big reveal of the diagnosis. As opposed to the actual medical case reports they're usually basing the story on which will be titled "An unusual case of X syndrome" or something similar. So you know right off the bat if it's even a case you're interested in reading about.