You’ve been reading text wrong the whole time: turn your screen upside-down for the true “pro” approach to reading! Also: combine clickbait style counterintuitive suggestions (A.K.A. “everyone is wrong”) with REAL NEWS to improve current events knowledge.

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Background:

One popular genre of clickbait article / clickbait video is the shocking reveal that some normal everyday thing is “wrong” in some way (Fig. 1).

Popular topics include “the normal U.S. electrical power outlets are actually upside-down!” and “you’re peeling a banana from the wrong end!” (https://www.google.com/search?q=peel+banana+wrong+end).

Fig. 1: Did you think that peeling a banana in a super easy fashion from the obvious “handle” was correct? Luckily, the Internet is here to correct you, YOU FOOL, YOU ABSOLUTE RUBE!!! SUCH CHILDLIKE NAÏVETÉ!!!!

Proposal:

Despite this “you’re doing it wrong” genre being such an obvious method of getting clicks / views, it’s surprisingly underdeveloped! Thus, the following proposal: whenever a really important topic needs discussion, the article writer will do two things:

  1. Write their actual article that is important, but that no one will click on. E.g. “overfishing causing fish stock collapse: local regulations bypassed by bribery.”
  2. Add a new secondary article that is vaguely related, but is much more intriguing (e.g. “You’ve been eating fish wrong the whole time—the SKELETON is actually the tastiest part of the fish!”)

Figure 2 contains some examples:

Fig. 2: Top left: the technology article “government adds spyware to messaging app” could be combined with “a computer mouse should be held with the tail facing TOWARDS you!” Right: the education article “literacy rates drop by 5% after trendy new approach is adopted“ could be combined with “actually, you should write ACROSS the lines on lined paper, not on top of them!” Bottom left: the food/health article “lettuce tainted by farm runoff” could be combined with “actually, you’ve been using dinner plates upside-down the WHOLE TIME!”

Conclusion:

If we suppose that an informed electorate is actually a good thing, then this is a great way to trick people into reading “real” news that they would otherwise ignore.

PROS: Could cause people to become informed of the grim and horrifying events occurring in the world, rather than just reading frivolous gossip and clickbait.

CONS: Could cause people to become informed of the grim and horrifying events occurring in the world, rather than just reading frivolous gossip and clickbait.