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First, make me care

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Re: First, make me care

#241

Post by munificent »

saghm wrote: post #126
munificent wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait until a generation of people who have been mainlining that since infancy while their thought patterns were still being formed becomes old enough to vote.

Oh no, will they elect a president who primarily operates in ragebait, heavily uses social media, and has no meaningful attention span for anything outside of receiving direct praise? Good thing we have such enlightened voters right now who would never for someone that!

Right, so imagine something even worse than the current state of affairs.

Re: First, make me care

#242

Post by jodrellblank »

ofalkaed wrote: post #93
tolerance wrote: post #30

You know I’ve never read an article by Gwern that made me feel like he was sensitive to this idea, one that in my head essentially breaks down to the use of narrative and the leverage of “stakes” that inform the reader of kinds of conflict that make a narrative special. I’m reminded of a remark made by David Foster Wallace (on KCRW? Or oft-repeated elsewhere) about how he had to come to terms with the purpose of writ…

>David Foster Wallace (on KCRW? Or oft-repeated elsewhere) about how he had to come to terms with the purpose of writing not being to show off how smart you are to the reader. He expands on this in his conversation with Bryan Garner (of Garner's Modern English Grammar) published as Quack this Way , and I think he gets to the core issue, which is that your ideas are not interesting to anyone but you; if you are showin…

> "you are assuming the reader will find your ideas as important and interesting as you do. It is the writer's job to show the reader why they should be interested, why they should care."

This is writing-as-bookselling and marketing. If you find your ideas interesting and want to write about them, it's not your job to show the reader why, you only expect readers who share your interest to be potential readers. You may not think the reader should be interested or should care at all?

Re: First, make me care

#243

Post by clort »

coolThingsFirst wrote: post #142

What are those sun symbols after paragraph ends. Always found them interesting.

Well they are sun symbols. I guess if you are asking how are they produced, they are embedded SVG in the CSS at https://gwern.net/static/css/style.css

see for instance --GW-image-sun-verginasun-black-svg

Re: First, make me care

#244

Post by jodrellblank »

mvkel wrote: post #55

This seems like a cheap trick to hook someone into a blog post (ironically, Gwern seems to disregard this almost universally). If I were reading a book and each chapter started with such a "hook," it'd start to feel like a LinkedIn post. Chapter 1: I didn't know what it felt like to be alive until I was dead... Chapter 2: Death was nothing compared to what came next: judgment. Chapter 3: I thought I knew what judgmen…

Chapter I: IN WHICH PHILEAS FOGG AND PASSEPARTOUT ACCEPT EACH OTHER, THE ONE AS MASTER, THE OTHER AS MAN

Chapter II: IN WHICH PASSEPARTOUT IS CONVINCED THAT HE HAS AT LAST FOUND HIS IDEAL

Chapter III: IN WHICH A CONVERSATION TAKES PLACE WHICH SEEMS LIKELY TO COST PHILEAS FOGG DEAR

- https://www.online-literature.com/verne/aroundtheworld/

Re: First, make me care

#245

Post by Dylan16807 »

antonvs wrote: post #167
Dylan16807 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not classic enough. You need to add an actual explanation if you want that comment to work. What are the multiple meanings to the same phrase? Presumably "weird and fun" is what you're calling out? But to me their post looks like it's using the exact same meaning both times.

> Presumably "weird and fun" Yes, you figured it out, so apparently I didn't need an "actual explanation". > looks like it's using the exact same meaning both times. That's a fascinating equivalence operator you're using.

Could you do me a favor and paraphrase the two meanings of "weird and fun" you see?

Because we can rewrite the second sentence with a pronoun so you're only parsing "weird and fun" once: "It's all on tiktok!" or to get over the top pedantic in removing any possibility of a double meaning: "The exact thing they say is lacking in quantity is still there on tiktok in full quantity."

Those both sound like basically the same as the original to me and they clearly don't have an equivocation fallacy on the phrase "weird and fun".

You could complain that putting so much on tiktok rather than other sites ruins the distribution, or something like that. Or you could say they're wrong and there is less. But that's not the equivocation fallacy you're accusing them of.

Re: First, make me care

#246

Post by sothatsit »

bondarchuk wrote: post #195
sothatsit wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I prefer reading interesting stories to textbooks. It's that simple. If all you want to read is textbook entries, then you are an outlier.

Re: First, make me care

#247

Post by ofalkaed »

jodrellblank wrote: post #242
ofalkaed wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>David Foster Wallace (on KCRW? Or oft-repeated elsewhere) about how he had to come to terms with the purpose of writing not being to show off how smart you are to the reader. He expands on this in his conversation with Bryan Garner (of Garner's Modern English Grammar) published as Quack this Way , and I think he gets to the core issue, which is that your ideas are not interesting to anyone but you; if you are showin…

> " you are assuming the reader will find your ideas as important and interesting as you do. It is the writer's job to show the reader why they should be interested, why they should care. " This is writing-as-bookselling and marketing. If you find your ideas interesting and want to write about them, it's not your job to show the reader why, you only expect readers who share your interest to be potential readers. You…

>You may not think the reader should be interested or should care at all?

You can but that does not mean you should. If you write under such assumptions your writing will likely not be of much interest to people who don't share your interest, you will be preaching to a choir and much of the choir may be interested in a different aspect or care about it in a very different way than you do. Writing under such assumptions means your writing depends on those assumptions. No idea why you think this is writing-as-bookselling and marketing, preaching to the choir is almost always better for sales than trying to win over people who don't care and are uninterested.

Re: First, make me care

#248

Post by stevage »

firefoxd wrote: post #26

I wrote my story and titled it, "My experience at work with an automated HR system". I sent it to a few friends, only a couple of them read it. A week later, I renamed it to "The Machine Fired Me". That seemed to capture it better. The goal wasn't to make it click bait, but it was to put the spoiler, and punch line right up front. It blew up! I had just read Life of Pi, and one thing I like about that book is that yo…

>I had just read Life of Pi, and one thing I like about that book is that you know the punch line before you even pick up a copy. A boy is stuck with a bengal tiger in a boat. Now that the punch line is out of the way, the story has time to unfold and be interesting in its own merit. That's what I was trying to recreate with my own story.

For me this is a perfect example of what I hate about clickbait.

A boy trapped in a boat with a tiger is interesting. But the rest of the story really wasn't worth the read.

Re: First, make me care

#249

Post by directevolve »

julianeon wrote: post #143
otikik wrote: post #61

Careful with this advice. If you max it out you end up with "You won't believe the weird trick that the city of Venice did to feed itself"

This article is just a slightly upscale version of the million "YouTube hooks" videos you can find on, well, you know. Down to the "create a gap" advice. Once upon a time "one weird trick" was good advice too, before it got ran into the ground.

In this era, it takes credibility to grab my attention before I even care about your promise of benefits.

It’s not “make me care.” It’s “make me believe and care, every step of the way.”

Re: First, make me care

#250

Post by zkmon »

BeetleB wrote: post #232
zkmon wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never cut out stuff that you felt important to include. Just forget the reader. The content you write should reflect you, not the reader. It's your expression. Don't make it a sales pitch, or a reflection of average reader's taste. I get scared when an author is talking to me, the reader. I stop reading when they pretend to be aware of my context. Things like "So you are reading this book because you want to learn ab…

> The content you write should reflect you, not the reader. It's not a binary proposition. One can write for both, as long as they're willing to compromise. I'd rather something be 80% good and have an audience than 100% good with no audience. Why write if no one will read? I have no idea if even I will read it - I already "read" it while writing it. Maybe in 20 years I'll revisit? I don't know. > I get scared when a…

Things like "kill your darlings" becomes a doctrine purely because of business goals, not artistic goals. It asks you to erase what you like, so that you can sell it. There is nothing visionary or prophecy-like wisdom in that. It's pure selling, which is considered divine by the capitalist western cultures.
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