5 ms·

This is a meta-level comment, but a technique I've been using for a while now, which I've found pretty helpful/useful, is that if an article starts off with an

This is a meta-level comment, but a technique I've been using for a while now, which I've found pretty helpful/useful, is that if an article starts off with an anecdote I immediately know not to bother reading it. It shows you that the author is more interested in pushing a feeling/emotion/story rather than relaying actual information. They're trying to manipulate how you think about the topic from the very beginning. It's really hard to describe the pattern but once you see it you can never unsee it. Just food for thought.

j7ake 3y ago
Also a lot of (newbie) start up pitches are like this.
rexpop 3y ago
This is a standard rhetorical technique for illustrating in personal terms what's difficult to imagine at a systemic or statistical level. It doesn't mean they're trying to manipulate you any more than you're trying to manipulate us, ie writing is pleading.
dustincoates 3y ago
A "fun" game I like to play with articles from the Verge is how many words until there's a first person pronoun. (It's almost always in the first sentence.) Maybe I'm getting old, but I don't need the journalist's backstory before I get the meat of the article.
- wizzwizz4 3y ago
  Four! :-P
escapedmoose 3y ago
There’s more than one reason to read an article. Often the story is the point.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  That's true, but not great. "I'm here for you to subtly impute how I should feel about something by bypass my critical faculties" is a poor substitute for people who want to be informed.
  - escapedmoose 3y ago
    Not that I have a horse in this race, but… Your information is always going to be sourced and/or presented by humans with bias. Isn’t it better when that bias is transparent? A solo author draws their reader into a proxy conversation with them (which naturally lends itself to some level of persuasion most of the time). As a reader (I believe) your job is to pay enough attention to catch the author if they’re off-base or not playing fairly, so that you’ll walk away with more accurate understanding than you started. I suppose if you don’t want to be challenged by a proxy dialogue then a better medium for you would be statistical analysis or a scientific, structured study, but unfortunately most topics just don’t get the dedicated resources to do that properly. I’ve seen the aggregators and summary bots as well, but that seems even worse: Cherry-picking “facts” from an essay without seeing the context around them? A recipe for misunderstanding and/or getting the wool pulled over your eyes. Maybe the best solution is for every article to have a comments section where folks can point out inaccuracies and inconsistencies to help each other out? Citizen fact-checkers? Then you wind up with… this same article, as-is, posted on Hacker News alongside intelligent debate ;)
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      > Isn’t it better when that bias is transparent? Yes. My point is those shows are presented as though they are telling you well-contextualised facts, and then they are making jokes about those facts. I think that presentation is deceptive.
zztop44 3y ago
This one might be a false positive. The article contains lengthy first person descriptions of conversations with SEO “pioneers” and reflections on how they’ve shaped the internet. I’d also question the heuristic in general. Anecdotes serve a range of purposes. And in any case, it’s quite easy to subtly push a feeling/emotion/story without anecdotes if that’s what you want to do.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pier25 3y ago
> They're trying to manipulate how you think about the topic from the very beginning. Isn't giving context exactly that?
pishpash 3y ago
You mean like Quora answers from a certain country's users?

j7ake 3y ago

Also a lot of (newbie) start up pitches are like this.

rexpop 3y ago

This is a standard rhetorical technique for illustrating in personal terms what's difficult to imagine at a systemic or statistical level. It doesn't mean they're trying to manipulate you any more than you're trying to manipulate us, ie writing is pleading.

dustincoates 3y ago

A "fun" game I like to play with articles from the Verge is how many words until there's a first person pronoun. (It's almost always in the first sentence.) Maybe I'm getting old, but I don't need the journalist's backstory before I get the meat of the article.

wizzwizz4 3y ago
Four! :-P

escapedmoose 3y ago

There’s more than one reason to read an article. Often the story is the point.

robertlagrant 3y ago
That's true, but not great. "I'm here for you to subtly impute how I should feel about something by bypass my critical faculties" is a poor substitute for people who want to be informed.
- escapedmoose 3y ago
  Not that I have a horse in this race, but… Your information is always going to be sourced and/or presented by humans with bias. Isn’t it better when that bias is transparent? A solo author draws their reader into a proxy conversation with them (which naturally lends itself to some level of persuasion most of the time). As a reader (I believe) your job is to pay enough attention to catch the author if they’re off-base or not playing fairly, so that you’ll walk away with more accurate understanding than you started. I suppose if you don’t want to be challenged by a proxy dialogue then a better medium for you would be statistical analysis or a scientific, structured study, but unfortunately most topics just don’t get the dedicated resources to do that properly. I’ve seen the aggregators and summary bots as well, but that seems even worse: Cherry-picking “facts” from an essay without seeing the context around them? A recipe for misunderstanding and/or getting the wool pulled over your eyes. Maybe the best solution is for every article to have a comments section where folks can point out inaccuracies and inconsistencies to help each other out? Citizen fact-checkers? Then you wind up with… this same article, as-is, posted on Hacker News alongside intelligent debate ;)
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    > Isn’t it better when that bias is transparent? Yes. My point is those shows are presented as though they are telling you well-contextualised facts, and then they are making jokes about those facts. I think that presentation is deceptive.

zztop44 3y ago

This one might be a false positive. The article contains lengthy first person descriptions of conversations with SEO “pioneers” and reflections on how they’ve shaped the internet. I’d also question the heuristic in general. Anecdotes serve a range of purposes. And in any case, it’s quite easy to subtly push a feeling/emotion/story without anecdotes if that’s what you want to do.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

pier25 3y ago

> They're trying to manipulate how you think about the topic from the very beginning. Isn't giving context exactly that?

pishpash 3y ago

You mean like Quora answers from a certain country's users?