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First, make me care

gwern.net

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Re: First, make me care

#191

Post by MonkeyClub »

rmunn wrote: post #120
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure it destroys something in you as well. So many context changes with no relation whatsoever and regular hooks that give you a pinch. We haven't evolved for that. Our brain is trying to figure out a narrative between two things following each other. It needs time to process stuff. And there is so much shock it can absorb at once. So many "?!" and open loops in a day. I made a TikTok account to at least know…

Thirty years ago, I read a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, in which he made very similar points about broadcast television. I don't remember all his points, but I vividly remember how talked about how you'll be watching a news story about something awful, maybe an earthquake in which hundreds of people died, and then with practically no warning you'll be hearing a happy jingle from a toothpast…

The same is true with the "In other news..." technique of seguing to the next story: its end result is overall desensitization and passive consumption.

Re: First, make me care

#192

Post by Aryezz »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #151
klustregrif wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't just find one hook that works and reuse it forever That seems to be exactly what succesfull acounts are doing. They go a year or two creating content in a theme and then find that one hook that makes people stay a second to see what heir content is and then their entire personality and content becomes that one hook repeated until naseum and no matter what they do to try to escape it it's impossible since…

Does TikTok even have persistent personalities of this type? I thought a big part of the service was its recommendation algorithm that will keep recommending you other new stuff, not just reruns of the same influencers.

It's both. Since most videos are a couple minutes long at most, and a TikTok doomscrolling session can last for hours, the algorithm can show you all the new videos you haven't seen of accounts you seem to enjoy (or are following), and a ton of new stuff as well.

Re: First, make me care

#193

Post by psychoslave »

simonw wrote: post #4

This is something I find fascinating about TikTok: on that platform you literally get a few seconds to catch the attention of your audience before they skip to the next video. You can't just find one hook that works and reuse it forever because people will get bored of it - including if that hook is heavily used by other accounts. This makes TikTok a fascinating brute-force attack on human psychology, with literally…

I wonder what proportion of people find things like TikTok, YouTube shorts, and even Twitter for the text counterpart, absolutely repulsive. It's not even disdain as in "I'm too good for this", more like some people can't stand the view of a spider I guess.

And other things like HN can definitely hook my mind.

Re: First, make me care

#194

Post by rcxdude »

mr_toad wrote: post #190
tstrimple wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this pretty much the definition of a meme? I mean before meme just became synonymous with funny cat videos. Like the actual meaning of the word.

Dawkins original definition was an idea that replicated unchanged , in an analogy to a gene, which is essentially a unit of DNA small enough to replicate unchanged.

mostly unchanged (or rather, unchanged most of the time). Mutations still happen and are necessary for evolution.

Re: First, make me care

#195

Post by bondarchuk »

sothatsit wrote: post #119
marginalia_nu wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, there are two basic schools. 1. Broadcast what the article is about to let the interested readers find it easier 2. Trick people into reading as much of the article as possible through any means The first makes sense if you want readers. The second makes sense if you're counting page impressions.

This is fairly uncharitable. The goal is not to trick people into reading, it is to motivate them as to why they should read. It is more about highlighting the most interesting part of your article to tell people why they should spend the time. You still have to deliver on your promises. I feel like Gwern’s example is quite illustrative of this point. Just framing the content differently makes you more motivated to j…

I don't know. It's almost universally assumed to be true that "making someone want to read on" is inherently good but IMO it's not. Why is it good to be "more motivated to jump into it"? If a plain description and some context does not motivate you, it would be better to spend your time elsewhere.

Re: First, make me care

#197

Post by ziofill »

bawis wrote: post #127
ziofill wrote: post #113

This reminds me of what my PhD supervisor told me as he was trashing my first draft of my first paper: “up until this point in your life you’ve been trained to convince someone who knows more than you that you know something by writing impressive equations and complex concepts. Now you are the expert and if you do that nobody will read your papers. And if someone stops after a few sentences you’ll lose citations too.…

What was your PhD thesis about ?

I studied the entanglement formed during a quantum nonlinear process

Re: First, make me care

#198

Post by sevenseacat »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #184
simonw wrote: post #4

This is something I find fascinating about TikTok: on that platform you literally get a few seconds to catch the attention of your audience before they skip to the next video. You can't just find one hook that works and reuse it forever because people will get bored of it - including if that hook is heavily used by other accounts. This makes TikTok a fascinating brute-force attack on human psychology, with literally…

This is leaking to loads of other media too - movie trailers have started with some quick action shots, then BIG text saying "trailer starts now". Like a trailer to a trailer. Which is released after a teaser for a trailer. They even have recurring sound effects (vine boom sounds, but movie trailer edition where every action event (explosion, punch, scene change) is accentuated with a distinct drum boom sound effect,…

How I hate the trend of videos like YouTube shorts to almost show the punchline of the video at the start before the full video.

Re: First, make me care

#199

Post by bondarchuk »

NegativeK wrote: post #94
bondarchuk wrote: post #9

I think "Just… start with the interesting part first" is quite different, and actually much better advice than "make me care". I'm more than done with stupid hooks and attention grabbing techniques, just plainly and honestly state at the outset what the point is of what will follow.

I now try to follow something like bottom line up front (BLUF) when I'm trying to quickly communicate something and respect someone's time: the most important, actionable detail first with details expanding as you read more. I first heard that it has a standard in an email from someone ex-military; they started the email with "BLUF: blah blah blah". Turns out the military had (has?) it as a standard for emails. Go fi…

So basically TL;DR :)

Re: First, make me care

#200

Post by kqr »

shalmanese wrote: post #129

There is content you write for acquisition and content you write for retention and my #1 tip for writers who want to engineer growing an audience is be clear before you sit down to write a piece which it’s going to be. Content for acquisition, the reader’s relationship is to the topic, they have to be convinced the topic is relevant to their life goals but it’s valuable despite who the topic. Content for retention, t…

This mirrors reflections I've had recently as well. I have been, for the most part, focusing on what you would call "content for acquisition", i.e. easily relatable, somewhat shallow, extensively researched articles that show off what I can write at my best.

But in trying to aim for a regular cadence in the past year, I've realised I cannot maintain that level across the board. So I've started to write things that aren't as "good", in my flawed subjective judgment. Yet surprisingly often those are the things I get positive emails about, from readers who are glad I took the time to put things into words.

I am trying to come to terms with the idea that some of my more enthusiastic readers might really be happy to read even things that aren't up to what I consider to be my standards. But it's deeply uncomfortable. Triggers my impostor syndrome like little else.

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