How To Stop Failing Accidentally And Start Failing With Real Purpose

An Experiment In Reverse Psychology

“Either I am deceived, or this will prove the most famous adventure that ever was known.” — Cervantes (Don Quixote)

How many I Have 10 Ideas That Will Change Your Life posts must I read, 25 Habits That Will Make You Instantly Rich, or 5 Simple Rules For The Happiest Life Ever? Titles like these must pull in good money otherwise millions of Medium writers wouldn’t keep churning them out like factory sausages.

What do Medium readers experience when they see these titles? Do their eyes glaze over, or do they get excited and click click click? Do they throw themselves headlong into the articles like Don Quixote chasing windmills, or the romantic mirages of knight-errantry?

Is humor dead? Has Self-Improvement culture finally dropped the last bomb killing the last shred of humor, humility, and humanity?

“Those things yonder are no giants, but windmills, said Sancho” — Cervantes (Don Quixote)

Take the last 50 of these articles you have read, showing up under tags like Life, Money, Personal Growth, Transformation: have any of them made you rich, happier, more beautiful, the envy of the world?

Titles that sound a little like:

50 Short Habits That Will Transform You Into A Cross Between Elon Musk And Jeff Bezos.

85 Facial Expressions That Will Turn You Into The Envy Of The World.

Do These 10 Things And Land On Forbes Rich List.

Turn These Ten Tricks And Go Viral In A Matter Of Minutes.

“At last, hopelessly surveying myself all over, I was obliged to face the mortifying fact that I had been transformed not into a bird, but into a plain jackass.” — Apuleius (The Golden Ass)

What is encouraging this plethora of promise-saturated posts? I’m new to Medium and I’m honestly asking the question. Are curators encouraging these utterly formulaic titles that shamelessly dangle these carrots in front of our noses? Or is it some automated algorithm that has gone out of control, like 2001 Space Odyssey’s mad computer, Hal, following its own subversive demonic whims at all of our expense?

Say what you will about the title of my article, is it not at least original? Do Medium curators punish originality? Does the algorithm turn a blind eye to it in favor of a more tried and true title like 10 Best Steps To The Peak Of The Greatest Mountain Of Success In 20 Easy Minutes? If so, what repercussions will this have on the craft of writing going forward?

Am I wrong to question self-fulfilling algorithms, the assumptions of curators, unsavory profit motives, or Capitalism’s great collective Subconscious?

If Shakespeare were alive today would we tell him to go screw himself and come back to us when he has a more appropriate title like How Hamlet Got Over His Victim Mentality And Struck It Rich? Or How Macbeth Made Millions By Not Doing These 10 Things? Or maybe How Richard III Learned To Love Himself?

Would we tell Dostoyevski to write something more suitable like Brothers Bezos or Notes From The Top Of My Game?

Instead of the Tibetan Book Of The Dead, would we demand something more digestible like the Tibetan Book Of The Top Ten Tips To Going Viral?

I’m genuinely asking the question: what do original writers do in the age of algorithms?

Since I thus far have been accidentally failing with my strange titles and unfamiliar plots during my brief three weeks on Medium, I thought I would double down and fail with real purpose and energy, even if, instead of finding that ever-elusive giant of virality, all I get is a windmill of laughter.

“What giants? said Sancho Panza.” — Cervantes (Don Quixote)

© Carlo Zeno 2022

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Thank you for reading, and thank you to Illumination for continuing to publish my bizarre pieces. See two more freaks of writing below.