People rarely read the kicker
Title That Doesn’t Promise Anything
Highlighting subtitles is forbidden under the new rules
I almost died on a roller-coaster once.
It was one of these inverted machines where you don’t sit as much as you’re dangling. There’s nothing but air under your feet, except at the boarding bay where you have to stand on some platform before they get you hanging like a piece of meat, willingly sacrificing itself for the glory of the Adrenaline God.
They also ask you to empty your pockets and keep the loose change to buy chocolate-flavored offerings (for the Adrenaline God). On the plus side, it prevents people from losing their phones.
We were at the roller-coaster park to celebrate my ex-wife’s wedding anniversary.
Admittedly, it’s a strange thing to do, but we remained close friends, and our son was happy to spend the day on the rides with both of his parents. We had been to this particular park before (when we were still married), but he wasn’t tall enough to do all the rides back then.
My ex-wife’s new husband wasn’t as euphoric as my son about the whole thing (as one can imagine), and he low-key tried to kill me by offering some homemade lemonade containing pickle juice (to which I’m allergic).
But I’m the kind of person who would do the same and had anticipated and mitigated his treachery by shooting antihistamines in my left buttock before entering the park.
Still, the lemonade made me sneeze so hard that I almost fell from the inverted ride.
And that’s the anti-climatic ending of the day I almost died on a roller-coaster ride.
Author’s footnote regarding the new rules mentioned in the subtitle
I made up these rules — of course.
The goal was to make you highlight the subtitle. The kicker was there to make you comment. The anti-clickbait title was so anti-clickbait that it became clickbait and existed only to make you click.
And, finally, the roller-coaster story is fake (surprise, surprise) and was there to keep you 31 seconds because, under the new Medium system, there’s not much difference in earnings between stories read for 31 seconds or 31 minutes.
I guess I don’t need to mention that “I almost died on a roller-coaster once” is catchy and is a surefire way to convert a viewer into a reader.
Thank you for reading this story and subscribing to my Top Hat Seminar on Substack, a place where I intend to save the world.
For more clickbait, pick any of these fantastic stories written by the editors of this wonderful publication.
