87 Comments
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Auros's avatar

This is delightful. It's the much funnier, more elaborate version of "don't feed the trolls", an admonition that goes at least back to the days of Usenet, and remains important to this day.

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Jason Crawford's avatar

This is great. You should make it public

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Jun 6, 2022
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Daniel Reeves's avatar

Touche! Though I'm with Jason. I anticipate wanting to be able to link to this, like, a lot.

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George H.'s avatar

It's 'bad' to make you click... :^)

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Egg Syntax's avatar

'It’s paywalled on purpose to make you subscribe.'

Sorry, I've got the meter in my head now...

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Robert Stadler's avatar

For Scott's longer write-up of this idea, see https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/

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AFluffleOfRabbits's avatar

I like this but the rhythm - lack of rhythm, that is, unless I'm missing something - threw me a bit.

Is there a tune I should match it to in my head?

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Craig Chouraki-Lewin's avatar

*It's bad on purpose to make you click.*

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Maybe later's avatar

I was fearing an rms moment (🐈🎵Join us now and share the software🎶🐈)

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AT's avatar

I wonder if you might be (distantly?) related to Jacques Bailly (similar voice and appearance/vibe): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DxMSufIIqY

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John's avatar

Can we get a team together to make a high-production-value, memeable version of this? :D

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David J Keown's avatar

Can we hire Jeremy Irons? I want to hear an exasperated Scar say, "And the links overwhelmingly suck".

https://jeremyirons.net/contact-jeremy/

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Edward Scizorhands's avatar

Get it radio play!

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Sniffnoy's avatar

Hm, the last line of each stanza still doesn't really scan -- that's with hearing it. If you changed "make" to "get you to", it would scan a bit better, I think?

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imoimo's avatar

Awesome reading, but I think the last line of each stanza would sound better with the stress on PURpose, i.e. “It’s bad on PURpose, to make you CLICK”

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Wouter's avatar

As somebody reading your blog religiously for years, but a continent away from any ‘meetups’ that have you, and with the fact you never do interviews/podcasts/talks/… even post-NYT-comeout… It feels strangely momentous/exciting to get to hear your (right?) voice for the first time!

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Kyle Williams's avatar

It has one rhyme per stanza, a line skip rhyme with “click”. So the 3rd to final line will rhyme with “Click”.

Tic, dick etc

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Bullseye's avatar

The final line of each stanza messes up the rhythm (though it does rhyme). I think "It's bad on purpose to make you click" is, itself, bad on purpose.

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Alex Power's avatar

Yup, that is right on target. Everything except the refrain reads to me as standard English amphibrachic meter.

Although I wouldn't call it "bad on purpose", I would say "different for emphasis".

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Kyle Williams's avatar

“Bad on purpose to make you click” is only true for the headline. If the content is also bad on purpose, you might share it.

Though plenty of people share with out every reading the content, potential errors in this blog post are of a different kind of “bad”.

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Dan Pandori's avatar

I think its mostly anapaestic tetrameter, with a fair amount of liberties taken (as they should be).

Out of curiosity, where are you getting amphibrachic? I thought amphibrachs were pretty rare in English poetry.

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Tossrock's avatar

Some of the lines are definitely amphibrachic ("Some IN-tern from WILL-iams or AM-herst") but I don't think there's enough regularity in the meter to call it one way or another

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Michael Watts's avatar

That line can be called amphibrachic, but it's not difficult to call it anapestic either; the beginning and end of a poetic line are always a little freer than the rest of it, but they're also the only way the rhythm could distinguish between an anapestic meter and an amphibrachic one. (There are other ways you might distinguish the two meters, such as looking at caesuras, but there is no way to do it by looking at the rhythm.)

By way of example, look at the line "if you even admit their existence", which must be analyzed as either amphibrachs with an extra syllable at the beginning of the line, or anapests with an extra syllable at the end of the line. Both analyses would be quite conventional, but the anapestic analysis is a little more conventional - I learned poetic scansion without any mention ever being made of amphibrachs at all.

Similarly, in the second stanza, the meter of the fourth line matches well with the meter of the first three lines (assuming that a comma represents a silent unstressed syllable), but it is offset from them. Either it must be analyzed as beginning with an extra syllable which doesn't count towards the meter, or the first three lines must be analyzed as beginning with "short feet" which are missing their first syllables. Again, either analysis would be normal.

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Michael Watts's avatar

> Everything except the refrain reads to me as standard English amphibrachic meter.

I'm not seeing it. We can rule out an amphibrachic meter in several ways: many lines begin with two unstressed syllables; a couple of them place three unstressed syllables in sequence; a few place two stressed syllables in sequence, and many have two stressed syllables with just a single unstressed syllable between them.

I scanned the poem in a spreadsheet and colored the stresses to make the rhythm visually obvious; it is not at all consistent. This doesn't work well as oral poetry, but musical support might help. Here's my scansion, with x unstressed and X stressed:

xxXxxXxXx

xxXxxXxX

xxXxxXxxXxxX

xxXxxXxxX

xxXxxXxxXx

xxXxxXxX

xXxxXxXxxX

xXxXxxXxX

xXxxXxxXx

xXxxXxxX

xXxxXxxXxxX

xxXxxXxX

xXxxXxxXx

xXxxXxX

xXxxXxxXx

xxXxXxxXxX

xXxxXxxXx

xxXxxXxxX

xXxxXxxXx

xxXxxXxxX

xxXxXXxxXx

xxXxXXxxX

xxXxxxXx

xXxXxxXxX

xxXxxXXxXx

xxXxXxxX

xXxxXxxXx

xxXxXxX

xxXxxXxxXx

xxXxxxX

xxXxxXxxXxxX

xXxXxxXxX

xxXxxXxxXx

xxXxxXxxX

xXxXXxXx

xXXXxX

xxXxXxxXx

xXxxxX

xXxxXxXx

xXxXxxXxX

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bakkot's avatar

A couple of tweaks would go a long way, to my untrained ear. These restore the general DA-da-da rhythm without breaking any of the rhymes.

---

Or that sunsets are transphobic

->

Or that sunsets are super transphobic

---

As engagement metrics rise

->

As engagement and metrics both rise

---

Then you're falling for their trick

->

Then you're caught in their devilish trick

["stupidest" also works]

---

When spoken, all troubles vanish

When thought, all sorrows fall

->

When spoken, all troubles will vanish

When thought, all sorrows will fall

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Mark Y's avatar

Yeah, that does seem a bit better

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madasario's avatar

*looks around*

Oh, you're talking to me. Got it, I'll do better. :)

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Kyle Williams's avatar

Funny enough Ryan Long just posted a video this morning making fun of a litany of vice articles, and the entire time I was wondering if those articles only get circulation from people making fun of them.

I am happy that this post was good on purpose.

https://youtu.be/uVwFyMF9JO4

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Steeven's avatar

This was fun. I’d make it a children’s book if I had DALL-E access

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Maxwell E's avatar

Coming less than 10 minutes after I clicked on a link just to read something I knew would piss me off… I suppose this is prescient.

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Kenny Easwaran's avatar

*postscient

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apxhard's avatar

mostly identical thought:

https://apxhard.com/2021/03/18/a-prayer-for-sanity/

more serious commentary: we still make most of our choices with our meat brains; once we can better encode _our own values_ into computers, we can use the computers to make choices for us in ways that line up with our own values

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B Civil's avatar

You mean like mom and dad used to do?

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madasario's avatar

Nah, mom and dad used to make choices for us in ways that line up with *their* values.

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B Civil's avatar

Or maybe that was our meat brain getting in the way of good advice...?

Anyway, I love the idea of a computer telling me what’s good for me.

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AT's avatar

The key question is: what is the cumulative social outcome of a contagious outrage extensively used by (social) media over the last 5-10 years? I wouldn't be surprised if it served as a self-perpetuating, self-fulfilling prophecy, significantly contributing to the polarization, depression/anxiety rates, and people actually drifting towards these nonsensical ideas. :(

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George's avatar

:)

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Alex Power's avatar

My question is still: what if we ... didn't encourage that? I'm not sure we can stop the likes of Business Insider from writing bad-on-purpose content, but we might be able to stop 'the algorithm' from interpreting those clicks as a signal to promote the content further.

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Kenny's avatar

We could of course just use better algorithms! I'm very happy with RSS and email.

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Will Matheson's avatar

Beautiful.

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Elle's avatar

This is great. That is all. I hope you post it without a paywall eventually, so I can share it with people with a clear conscience. :-)

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Maybe later's avatar

It's sad on purpose to make them… nevermind.

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John's avatar

I agree, this should be posted for all to see. Would do a lot of good if it went even slightly viral.

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ray's avatar

Well, it's better than Moldbug's poems.

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Bugmaster's avatar

You know, I wonder if this is a problem we can outsource to AI. I'd love to have an AI assistant that would read the Internet for me, and return only the non-clickbaity parts (so, 0.01%). Of course, there's a danger that the adversaries would employ AI to generate clickbait, as well (more so than they do already), and we'll end up in an arms race culminating in the Singularity... but... is that really such a heavy price to pay ? :-/

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Brendan Richardson's avatar

Scott continues his quest to turn his blog into a Kipling appreciation society, I see.

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Peter Someone's avatar

What I was going to say. “When the young internet user signs onto the web, they click like a babe and they…”

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Slinkynano's avatar

I knew the rhythm of this reminded me of something! https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/winners.html

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Godoth's avatar

Kipling for the Very Online set. I love it.

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Philip Dhingra's avatar

What does it mean?

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Philip Dhingra's avatar

This wasn't meant as a troll question. Was there some meme in the news recently, about how it's now considered an abrogation of consent to hack people's psychology to drive them into clickbait? Or that somehow blaming Facebook's algorithm instead of people is the ultimate collective, moral failing?

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Mark Y's avatar

Pretty sure this is not a response to any specific thing recently in the news. More like “here’s a helpful principle to keep in mind when you see totally bonkers headlines”

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Golden_Feather's avatar

I don't think there was any broader moral or social observation. Just a pragmatic rule to keep in mind to stay sane and moored to reality when using social media

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Philip Dhingra's avatar

The phrasing has really strange syntax, and I've seen things in the rat-sphere that make me think he's tapping into something that's been talked about, at least when this post was first written.

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DavesNotHere's avatar

Should be lyrics of a punk tune.

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beowulf888's avatar

Excellent! Just to confirm — you did write this poem, right, Scott?

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Scott Alexander's avatar

Yes.

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David Gretzschel's avatar

Good. Yes. I like it. Now we need a poem for the danger of "It's good on purpose to make you click". That one may be even more insidious, since it can make you feel virtuous even though it substitutes rational action towards fulfilling your own utility function by trapping you in someone else's beautiful mental explorations and furthering theirs. Not that I would speak from experience :)

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Mormegil's avatar

I'd love to have this translated into my language so that I could recite it whenever my parents show me some terrible toxoplasma-of-rage-filled article about wokes in USA, bureaucrats in EU, etc. Unfortunately, the idea of me translating (or writing) such a poem is so above my head it's funny.

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AnthonyCV's avatar

Something about this gave me strong Gods of the Copybook Headings vibes, with a similar sense of "Oh, I've learned something useful just by having something obvious beaten into my brain more."

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Scott Smyth's avatar

Turns out Mel Brooks was into something with The Priducers.

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Sabiola's avatar

I'd like to have a go at translating it into Dutch, but who are 'the frogs and the pinks' in the third line?

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David J Keown's avatar

Forgive my ignorance. Is "It's bad on purpose to make you click" a well known phrase? I remember reading it on Twitter in response to the New Yorker article about SSC, but have not seen it since.

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Nelshoy's avatar

it isn’t that well known except on a certain part of Twitter. I think it’s a catchphrase from the (excellent) anonymous Twitter poster @eigenrobot

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David J Keown's avatar

Thanks

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Golden_Feather's avatar

It's a general lesson that appears everywhere. Don't feed the troll, don't fall for the (click) bait, etc

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Eremolalos's avatar

Here, guys, have some Dunciad, by Alexander Pope -- about the flood of dullness in his day quenching the fires of intellect and inspiration. I love his vindictive passion at the end!

In vain, in vain,—the all-composing hour

Resistless falls; the Muse obeys the power.

She comes! she comes! the sable throne behold

Of Night primeval, and of Chaos old!

Before her Fancy’s gilded clouds decay,

And all its varying rainbows die away.

Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,

The meteor drops, and in a flash expires.

Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine;

Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!

Lo! they dread empire, Chaos, is restored;

Light dies before they uncreating word:

They hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall:

And universal darkness buries all.

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Sabiola's avatar

I had a go at making a Dutch translation. I can't figure out how to separate the stanzas though, or how to make things italic:

Terwijl je de kronkels van Twitter doorkruist

En je trekt door de bergen van Zuck

En rechts en links overstelpt je met links

En de links zijn modern gezegd ‘ruk’

Als de redditors zeggen ‘lees dit eens’

Als de TikTokker tokkelt en tikt

Houd dit dan steeds in je gedachten:

’t Is met opzet zo slecht dat je klikt.

Echt, geen mens gaat het geloven

Het wordt heus geen trend, nationaal

Een gekkie in Gein met een ziekelijk brein

Heeft iets doms gezegd. Einde verhaal.

Een stagiaire op een redactie

Heeft de hele zooi overgetikt

En nu staat het vooraan in de kranten

Met opzet zo slecht dat je klikt.

Iemand die denkt dat-ie slim is

Vindt dat kinderen hinderen zijn

Of dat je ‘geprivilegieerd’ bent

Als je loopt met je hond aan de lijn

Kattenliefhebbers zijn nazi’s

En lezers van boeken getikt

En zonsondergangen transfobisch

’t Is met opzet zo slecht dat je klikt.

Als je pagina’s volschrijft ertegen

Met een lijst van hun leugens erin

Dan lachen ze als een hyena

Want die aandacht die is naar hun zin

Als je blijk ervan geeft ze te kennen

Dan hebben ze jou al gestrikt

Laat ze dus stikken door niet meer te klikken

’t Is met opzet zo slecht dat je klikt.

Met deze mantra verdrijf je

De demonen van Mara en Baal

Gesproken verjaagt hij problemen

Gedacht wordt hij zorgen fataal

’t Is een zwaard om illusies te doden

Dat iedere leugen verschrikt

Schrijf het dus maar op je voorhoofd:

’t Is met opzet zo slecht dat je klikt.

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AwesomeLemon's avatar

Heel leuk! Mijn Nederlands is niet zo goed maar ik heb toch genoten van je vertaling

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Sabiola's avatar

Dankjewel! <3

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Eric R's avatar

Can we get this on a t-shirt?

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Nick Allen's avatar

The psychosecurity essay written in the style of "The Gods of the Copybook Headings" we all needed.

But seriously, thank you so much. This piece is incredibly important, and it needs to be amplified.

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Joey Marianer's avatar

I couldn't help myself and set this to music. Hope you don't mind. This video is unlisted so that it should only be accessible from here. Of course, I'll take it down upon request. https://youtu.be/J1boM_6tFbk

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Chebky's avatar

Excellent! And I think you adapted well the rhythm-breaking last line of each stanza. That's a hard part of putting poetry to music

Why not all of it?

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Joey Marianer's avatar

Thanks for the compliment. Two reasons I didn't do the whole thing: first, because I don't have a fancy setup, I'd have to do the whole thing in one take, and I just know I'd flub a line in verse 4 and have to start over. The second reason is that I'm simply lazy. :)

If I ever get into a recording studio again, I might (ask for permission and then) do the whole thing.

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David Piepgrass's avatar

> No actual person believes it

> It isn't a national trend

This is where you lost me. My father believes it all. He probably didn't in the 90s, so it's a trend. His brother died of Covid, his favorite televangelist Marcus Lamb died of Covid, so of course he's more convinced than ever that vaccines are the REAL threat. This is just the latest. He put a button on the BACK of my phone to protect my brain from the harmful EM rays it generates. He hates Obamacare but has probably relied more on health insurance payouts for Mother than anyone else I know. I sent him the book Scout Mindset; he said the author "overthinks things", but that I should read the book again while pondering if the antivaxxers might be right (this, he thinks, is the trick to making me change my mind, rather than evidence). Finally, he says, I don't know what a "scout mentality" even is.

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inedibill's avatar

I still think about this regularly, and am so grateful it exists to console me when I see a headline like "Yes, slavery is on the ballot in some states." This piece is easily worth the price of my subscription unto itself. At some point I hope you'll make it public.

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Beth's avatar

My attempt to make it scan better:

As you travel the sewers of Twitter

As you pass through the Lands of the Zuck

And the frogs and the pinks overwhelm you with links

And the links overwhelmingly suck

When the Redditors ask if you've read it

When the TikTokkers talk and then tic

Remember this fact, before you react:

It's awful on purpose to get you to click.

No actual person believes it

It isn't a national trend

Some loony in Maine with a turd for a brain

Said some idiot thing, that's the end

Some intern from Williams or Amherst

Wrote all of it up, real slick

And now it's displayed, on WaPo's front page,

But it's stupid on purpose to get you to click.

Some galaxy-brainer in Brooklyn

Says that kids should be thrown in a bog

Or that you have "revealed your white privilege"

If you don't let them murder your dog

Or that liking cats makes you a Nazi

Or that reading books makes you a dick

Or that all sexual acts are transphobic attacks:

It's outrageous on purpose to get you to click.

If you shoot back a twelve-page rebuttal

With a categorized list of their lies

They'll laugh like demented hyenas

As they watch the engagement scores rise

If you even admit their existence

Then you've fallen headfirst for their trick

Let them rot in their lair as you starve them of air

'cause it's garbage on purpose to get you to click.

This invincible mantra will banish

All the demons of Mara and Baal

When spoken, all troubles vanish

When thought, all sorrows will fall

It's a sword that defeats the illusion

And cuts it right through to the quick

Tattoo this refrain on the front of your brain

IT'S ENRAGING ON PURPOSE TO GET YOU TO CLICK

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Jacob Falkovich's avatar

If the author says outgroup is making them sick

If the headline is someone just being a dick

If you follow the link then you fell for the trick

It's just bad on purpose for making you click

https://twitter.com/yashkaf/status/1217581651309604866

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Anon's avatar

This doesn't scan, Scott.

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Cloven Pine Games's avatar

I love the sentiment and most of the poetry. I am bothered by the way the crucial refrain does not seem to scan! What about, instead, "It's meant to be bad so you'll click"? I think the message still comes through, and it fits better with the verse.

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The Shadow Band's avatar

this will be our anthem

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