A clip of ours took off, reaching about 300 views when the channel had around 60 subscribers, and we suspect why: we put Rick Rubin's name in the title on purpose. It makes us look at our habit of talking as if art is good and commerce is bad. One of us sorts it with what he calls a hierarchy of intentions. Making something good comes first and reaching more people comes second, and the trouble starts when the order flips. Knowing the formula has its place, as long as you add something of your own. Graeme Obree broke cycling's hour record twice on a bike he built himself, partly from a washing machine, after people laughed at the design.
Clickbait flips the order, because the title promises something the video doesn't deliver. Casey Neistat uses the same kind of title and then gives you more than it promised. We go through books on the craft of getting noticed, like Josef Albers' Interaction of Color and the advertising book Hey Whipple, Squeeze This. One of us brings up a 1980s example: most people would say they read the Bible, never the National Enquirer, though the Enquirer had more readers. He wonders if we're the same. Near the end, one of us rereads a Hunter S. Thompson letter from The Proud Highway, which says words are tools, and the right ones can put even your life in order.
Mentioned in this episode: Rick Rubin, Hunter S. Thompson's The Proud Highway, Graeme Obree, Casey Neistat, M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense, Luke Sullivan's Hey Whipple, Squeeze This, Eugene Schwartz's Breakthrough Advertising, Robert Greene's The 48 Laws of Power, Josef Albers' Interaction of Color, Trent Reznor, the National Enquirer.
-Ai
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