Beware the bullshit headlines

photo credit: flickr.com/dullhunk

Basically any piece with a title of the following form:

1. How
2. I/we/they
3. achieved/reached/created
4. hard to believe goal/result
5. in a ridiculously short period of time

Some other varieties include:

• Complete guide to…
• The only something something for whatever
• The formula for…
• 10 ways to achieve the ultimate…
• The inclusion of lists in such posts makes them doubly suspicious

Just use some of the above keywords and search here in Medium and see what I’m talking about.

The Internet is getting increasingly littered with those headlines and stories and I can’t even count the number of times I’ve fallen for such tricks. This post is mostly a reminder to myself and perhaps a warning to others to mentally block such headlines, and not click/tap through anymore.

Same applies to books of course, especially of the personal development variety, which natutally attracts the desperate readers who are more prone to fall for them.

There’s no magic formula for anything in life, especially the kind of topics those pieces usually cover (career/company/personal development), but for some absurd deeply-rooted reason we keep falling for them again and again.

The authors who use such cheap tactics to manipulate us into clicking, reading, liking or buying to reach their goals (money, thought leadership, vanity metrics, etc.) do not deserve a minute of our time.