What Joining a Cult While Having Sex with Married Women and Abusing Pills Taught Me About Writing Clickbait

First things first, I make no excuses for my behavior, but this is also not an apology. During my various immoral exploits, I’ve learned a valuable lesson on how to succeed as a writer.

At the beginning of last year, my once stable life took a drastic turn. One moment, I had it all. Then, I started having anonymous sex with married women. The guilt of being a homewrecker led to an opioid addiction and I joined a cult just to spice things up and keep my mind off of all the damage I was doing.

The mistakes I’ve made are for me and me alone to come to terms with and frankly, it’s none of your business anyway. But during my numerous amoral exploits, chiefly joining a cult while having sex with married women and abusing prescription painkillers, I believe I’ve learned something worth sharing. I have learned how to write effective clickbait bullshit.

Every day a voice in my head told me “This is crazy, stop!” but then another voice would say, “The organic reach on whatever bullshit I write from this will be huge!” Sure, as I lay in the bed of stranger after stranger night after night, my mind was in a mental prison. But in that mental prison, I couldn’t help but wonder “Would VICE be into this one? Wait…VICE went bankrupt. Maybe The Atlantic?”

I’m not writing this in the hopes of being forgiven, and I don’t need your pity. I am merely sharing my experience because I believe that what my experience has taught me about writing provocative clickbait could be invaluable to society.

People Click on Things That Anger Them

You scroll through your feed past dozens of posts featuring your friends’ annoying children, maybe you come across a dog whose best friend is a duck and think “that’s cute” and continue scrolling. Then you notice an article about how Donald Trump wants to legalize murdering pandas. You immediately share it, with no less than ten angry emojis because words are for people who condone murdering pandas.

See, here’s the thing — people love getting pissed off. They eat that shit up. You could scroll past a bunch of articles about people dying and not give a fuck, but the moment you see an article about some politician you don’t like wanting to legalize panda murder, you’re all up in arms and ready to argue with anyone who disagrees with you.

I have essay-length arguments with people opposing panda murder, some of whom are animal rights activists, and all of whom are pussies.

What does any of this have to do with clickbait? It IS clickbait, dipshit.

Your Headline Should Be Highly Polarized and Intentionally Annoying

It’s not enough to simply do a bunch of controversial bullshit and then write drab drivel about it. You’ve got to ask yourself “How do I reframe this in the most asinine context possible?”

You Don’t Need to Have a Point

Am I pro-gun or anti-gun? Is America facing an opioid epidemic? Did I ever leave that cult I was in? None of that matters. The only point that matters is that you are here right now reading these words and somehow that is worth money.

Drugs Are Fun and Murdering Pandas Is Fun

That’s just true.

You Don’t Have to Teach the Reader Anything

As I said in the introduction, this is neither a defense of my actions nor an apology. It’s just me stating the fact that I have done something unsavory and then you click on the description of that thing, wondering “what is his angle?” or whatever. I have never actually said definitively that I am no longer a pill-popping panda murderer, nor will I.

You Can Lie

I once wrote an entire article about joining a cult while banging heroin into my veins and advocating panda murder. Total bullshit. That’s the beauty of it, it doesn’t have to be about anything. You should try it.

So, there you have it. My questionable life choices have taught me how to write some killer clickbait. You’re welcome.

Now, I know some of you might be thinking, “Hey, isn’t this guy just promoting unethical and irresponsible behavior?” To which I say, fuck off. I’m not here to be your moral compass. I’m just sharing what I’ve learned.

But hey, if you’re not into that kind of thing, that’s cool too. You do you. Just don’t come crying to me when nobody reads your boring-ass articles.

All jokes aside, thanks for listening to my ramblings. I hope you found some value in what I had to say. And if you didn’t, well, I don’t give a shit.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some married women to seduce and pandas to murder. Kidding, kidding. Maybe.

Happy April Fools Day, everyone.