First off, your titles never fail to disappoint :) Substack is definitely a different type of ecosystem that I would hate for it to succumb to the relentless marketing ploys of dead internet bots. Unfortunately, I feel this space is already being invaded, and it's a shame.
A little off-topic, but I've noticed some celebrities joining Substack (non-writers), and I question why. Sure, maybe they want to read a good essay, but honestly, they're there to algowhore as a means to stay relevant (in my *humble* opinion).
And yes, you've discovered a new word, and I love it! It totally fits.
Awesome! Thanks. John Cleese comes to mind on that type of celebrity and I agree. I do follow him, mostly so I can comment and drop links to bring in a new audience. So if I'm using algowhores to drive my own traffic does that make me an Algopimp? 🤣
In it the writer says you need to "double hook" people to get them to stay engaged and share your articles so more people see them and I kept thinking this feels like something spammy, like a marketing email. I could not imagine myself being able to write in that way because I don't like reading things like that. I could tell he was attempting to use that technique in the article, and I didn't give it a "like" at the end because I didn't want to promote things like that as good.
I thought, if I started to write in this way, I may gain more subscribers, but are they the kind of subscribers I would want to gain and wouldn't I be driving off the kind of subscribers I want to keep?
The writer even lashed out at a comment that seemed like a normal reaction. The comment was "i don’t think it’s anyone’s main goal in life to succeed on substack except you. not everyone joins social media to try and crack the algorithm, some people just genuinely just want to write and read."
I would call it rude, perhaps, because I think there are more people than one who want to succeed on Substack, but the rest is true. Rather than let the comment be or discuss further, he called the commentor a "troll." That's not trolling, it's just common sense.
It's sad that our algorithms tend to promote that crap. Sometimes I scroll and scroll and nothing good comes up on the feed (then I'll find a subscription of mine had written an article I wanted to read and it somehow never made it into my feed).
I just looked at that guy's article and I already can't stand him.
I understand his point about being counterintuitive. It just doesn't seem to have occurred to him that the best way to be counterintuitive is to have something genuinely thoughtful to say.
More to the point, I think this is an example of the 'enshittification' that Michael talks about. On the one hand, presenting counterintuitive insights works to engage people. On the other hand, a cottage industry pops up around them, and you get legions of "readers-wanna-see-my-listicles" content bros going through the forms of insight but straying from the heart of it.
A good point, though, and one to keep in mind: When you see a spam tactic like the one in the article you read, stop for a moment and ask yourself, "What genuine form of engagement is this aping?"
If you can find an answer to that question, why not try out the genuine form of engagement?
So, for example, this "double hook" approach is all about faking counterintuitive insight. I don't think honest writers will want to mimic the "double hook" technique because again, it's scuzzy.
But what if, instead, you took a more natural piece of advice from it--like, "whenever you are thinking about a topic, examine the parts of your understanding that are cliche, and then ask yourself how the reverse might also be true"--?
That central approach is employed by G.K. Chesterton and his writing has remained electric for over 100 years. His pattern is to take a piece of the conventional wisdom of his time--the type that is repeated to the point of exhaustion--and then flip it on its head and argue for the exact opposite. He does it on every page and yet every time it's delightful, and by the time he's done, you're left with a more nuanced understanding, seeing old, established ideas and new, surprising ones interacting with each other in complex and informative ways.
There's good and bad things to be said about Chesterton, but he's a master of inversion, and the thing that makes him exciting is that rather than presenting a cheap hack of counter-intuitiveness to cultivate attention, he embodies the principle with every aspect of his prose, coupling it with good humor and a deep reverence for the wisdom of the normal.
I have used that "technique" a bit, probably without thinking that through (naming it as such). I've written about how it's not really that opposites attract even if it looks like it, and I've written about why forgiving someone's student loans through BDR is good (when my readership would consider the whole forgiveness thing as "all bad.") I don't believe either article did too well, lol. But I'm not a large Substack writer with tons of subscribers sharing my stuff all the time.
Sometimes I think it's just about waiting through time for people to find the work and it can grow more naturally rather than through brute force.
I played around with some things that might be close but I agree, I can't play that game. I just go for counterintuitive and find that gives me a niche and a way to be unique without algowhoring.
I read that guy’s article too and I honestly didn’t understand what he was trying to say. I think if you just write from an authentic place people will find you. If you spend all of your time thinking and working as he was trying to promote, your own quality of writing is diminished.
I like to play with the algorithm as well, but I do it to serve my own reading list. I have found if you mute and unmute writers randomly you get a nice variety of new and different stuff; also fun is using the “explore” feature and choosing to spend time on stuff I’d never read tends to dredge up some fun as well, sort of like using google to search on “axe murder” or “grenade launcher”. You never know what you might get in ads or search results after those searches.
That's good information to know. I agree on how algowhoring threatens to diminish the quality of my writing. My main thing is the counterintuitive. Finding that gives me enough uniqueness.
This is why I shut down my Substack and just futs around on here with this throwaway account from time to time. No amount of traffic is worth putting up with this bullshit.
I find Notes is pretty decent with a few problem. It's nothing compared to the cesspool of algowhoring on Instagram and LinkedIn. But it's all getting polluted. Glad you're here though!
Great post, fellas, and phew, I'm relieved that I wasn't exposed for any algowhoring!
I had no idea that's what it's called, what a great term.
As for calling people out, I must admit that I had some fun with it, as much as it irritated me. I engaged with a few of the people but it never got heated and most ignored me. I usually restacked their post with some snarky comment like 'hey gang, we got another live one here!'
There are so many lovely notes that get no love, and much like Halle, I will regularly put hearts to tell people 'yeah, I saw this, and yeah, I appreciate the sentiment and the thought behind it.'
The types of notes that drive me mad are those empty, banal platitudes, similar to the Broetry I suppose. You know those emphatic one-liners that are so damn cringeworthy and are meant to inspire. Who the hell 'likes' this nonsense?
I have a simple notes 'strategy' that others might benefit from: I try to have fun with it and use as much wit (most of it bad) and sarcasm as I can. It's more fun when you don't take it too seriously - I save that for my posts.
I love putting broetry into ChatGPT and telling it to make it Rhyme and then posting that back as my comment with "Here, I at least made your broetry rhyme for you." I only wish it would catch on or that someone doing broetry would actually make it rhyme.
Hi! I'm new to Polymathic Being, and...
Crap, I can't even do a fake one.
I keep commenting every day and get LITRRALLY zero likes. Does anyone else see this?
^ This man has mastered the genre. Pay attention to him.
Something something ONE WEIRD TRICK
You're getting it!
Scientists HATE ME!
Now you're crossing into the art of Clickbait. A key tennant of Algowhoring and you won't beleive the real truth:
https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/clickbait-priming
First off, your titles never fail to disappoint :) Substack is definitely a different type of ecosystem that I would hate for it to succumb to the relentless marketing ploys of dead internet bots. Unfortunately, I feel this space is already being invaded, and it's a shame.
A little off-topic, but I've noticed some celebrities joining Substack (non-writers), and I question why. Sure, maybe they want to read a good essay, but honestly, they're there to algowhore as a means to stay relevant (in my *humble* opinion).
And yes, you've discovered a new word, and I love it! It totally fits.
Awesome! Thanks. John Cleese comes to mind on that type of celebrity and I agree. I do follow him, mostly so I can comment and drop links to bring in a new audience. So if I'm using algowhores to drive my own traffic does that make me an Algopimp? 🤣
Toooootally an algopimp 😆 great strategy though ha!
Yesterday I read an article "I Studied the Top 1% of Substack Posts. Here's the Pattern No One Talks About." https://escapethecubicle.substack.com/p/clever-pattern-i-found-in-viral-substack
In it the writer says you need to "double hook" people to get them to stay engaged and share your articles so more people see them and I kept thinking this feels like something spammy, like a marketing email. I could not imagine myself being able to write in that way because I don't like reading things like that. I could tell he was attempting to use that technique in the article, and I didn't give it a "like" at the end because I didn't want to promote things like that as good.
I thought, if I started to write in this way, I may gain more subscribers, but are they the kind of subscribers I would want to gain and wouldn't I be driving off the kind of subscribers I want to keep?
The writer even lashed out at a comment that seemed like a normal reaction. The comment was "i don’t think it’s anyone’s main goal in life to succeed on substack except you. not everyone joins social media to try and crack the algorithm, some people just genuinely just want to write and read."
I would call it rude, perhaps, because I think there are more people than one who want to succeed on Substack, but the rest is true. Rather than let the comment be or discuss further, he called the commentor a "troll." That's not trolling, it's just common sense.
It's sad that our algorithms tend to promote that crap. Sometimes I scroll and scroll and nothing good comes up on the feed (then I'll find a subscription of mine had written an article I wanted to read and it somehow never made it into my feed).
I just looked at that guy's article and I already can't stand him.
I understand his point about being counterintuitive. It just doesn't seem to have occurred to him that the best way to be counterintuitive is to have something genuinely thoughtful to say.
More to the point, I think this is an example of the 'enshittification' that Michael talks about. On the one hand, presenting counterintuitive insights works to engage people. On the other hand, a cottage industry pops up around them, and you get legions of "readers-wanna-see-my-listicles" content bros going through the forms of insight but straying from the heart of it.
A good point, though, and one to keep in mind: When you see a spam tactic like the one in the article you read, stop for a moment and ask yourself, "What genuine form of engagement is this aping?"
If you can find an answer to that question, why not try out the genuine form of engagement?
So, for example, this "double hook" approach is all about faking counterintuitive insight. I don't think honest writers will want to mimic the "double hook" technique because again, it's scuzzy.
But what if, instead, you took a more natural piece of advice from it--like, "whenever you are thinking about a topic, examine the parts of your understanding that are cliche, and then ask yourself how the reverse might also be true"--?
That central approach is employed by G.K. Chesterton and his writing has remained electric for over 100 years. His pattern is to take a piece of the conventional wisdom of his time--the type that is repeated to the point of exhaustion--and then flip it on its head and argue for the exact opposite. He does it on every page and yet every time it's delightful, and by the time he's done, you're left with a more nuanced understanding, seeing old, established ideas and new, surprising ones interacting with each other in complex and informative ways.
There's good and bad things to be said about Chesterton, but he's a master of inversion, and the thing that makes him exciting is that rather than presenting a cheap hack of counter-intuitiveness to cultivate attention, he embodies the principle with every aspect of his prose, coupling it with good humor and a deep reverence for the wisdom of the normal.
J
I have used that "technique" a bit, probably without thinking that through (naming it as such). I've written about how it's not really that opposites attract even if it looks like it, and I've written about why forgiving someone's student loans through BDR is good (when my readership would consider the whole forgiveness thing as "all bad.") I don't believe either article did too well, lol. But I'm not a large Substack writer with tons of subscribers sharing my stuff all the time.
Sometimes I think it's just about waiting through time for people to find the work and it can grow more naturally rather than through brute force.
I played around with some things that might be close but I agree, I can't play that game. I just go for counterintuitive and find that gives me a niche and a way to be unique without algowhoring.
I read that guy’s article too and I honestly didn’t understand what he was trying to say. I think if you just write from an authentic place people will find you. If you spend all of your time thinking and working as he was trying to promote, your own quality of writing is diminished.
I like to play with the algorithm as well, but I do it to serve my own reading list. I have found if you mute and unmute writers randomly you get a nice variety of new and different stuff; also fun is using the “explore” feature and choosing to spend time on stuff I’d never read tends to dredge up some fun as well, sort of like using google to search on “axe murder” or “grenade launcher”. You never know what you might get in ads or search results after those searches.
That's good information to know. I agree on how algowhoring threatens to diminish the quality of my writing. My main thing is the counterintuitive. Finding that gives me enough uniqueness.
I saw that one floating around. Maybe I should use it as a reference here?
Thanks for the shout out. I had a lot of fun creating that Introduce Me post.
You stuck the landing! Introductions are such a normal thing but there's a 'style' that popped out that was weird.
Thanks for sounding the alarm on the templated mockingbird Notes junking up the works. And thanks for the shout out, fellas!!
It’s a mess isn’t it?
I think it’s a crisis of confidence. People are worried their own words aren’t “enough”, so they try to copy.
Does zero to build authentic connection, but the vanity metrics give a dopamine hit.
It’s that dopamine hit that’s crazy. I get wanting to grow but I also don’t want the followers who fall for that sort of game.
This is why I shut down my Substack and just futs around on here with this throwaway account from time to time. No amount of traffic is worth putting up with this bullshit.
I find Notes is pretty decent with a few problem. It's nothing compared to the cesspool of algowhoring on Instagram and LinkedIn. But it's all getting polluted. Glad you're here though!
Great post, fellas, and phew, I'm relieved that I wasn't exposed for any algowhoring!
I had no idea that's what it's called, what a great term.
As for calling people out, I must admit that I had some fun with it, as much as it irritated me. I engaged with a few of the people but it never got heated and most ignored me. I usually restacked their post with some snarky comment like 'hey gang, we got another live one here!'
There are so many lovely notes that get no love, and much like Halle, I will regularly put hearts to tell people 'yeah, I saw this, and yeah, I appreciate the sentiment and the thought behind it.'
The types of notes that drive me mad are those empty, banal platitudes, similar to the Broetry I suppose. You know those emphatic one-liners that are so damn cringeworthy and are meant to inspire. Who the hell 'likes' this nonsense?
I have a simple notes 'strategy' that others might benefit from: I try to have fun with it and use as much wit (most of it bad) and sarcasm as I can. It's more fun when you don't take it too seriously - I save that for my posts.
I love putting broetry into ChatGPT and telling it to make it Rhyme and then posting that back as my comment with "Here, I at least made your broetry rhyme for you." I only wish it would catch on or that someone doing broetry would actually make it rhyme.
I might try that to see if it can get any traction. I'm a bit scared of ChatGPT though, not even sure I know how to use it! 😂
Super simple, just say “Make this Ryhme” and then copy and past the shitty post.