We’re All Lazy, But Hopeful-Lazy
I’d be laughing if I wasn’t also cringing.
Last week, I published a story, “Your Significant Other Will Show Up When You Stop Looking (and Other BS I Was Told in My 20s)” in The Post-Grad Survival Guide. If you’re familiar with my writing, you won’t be surprised to know it was a humorous take on why people might tell you to “stop looking.” Namely, that they’re too nice to tell you to get a hobby, or stop whining, or stop picking up drunk people at bars.
I was also dispensing some practical advice, not just relating thinly veiled anecdotes from the lives of my friends and my own life.
The story went live on Medium. Curated in Relationships. And within a few hours I had a surprisingly high number of “views”. . . and almost no “reads” as Medium defines it. My normal read ratio is 30-70%, so why was this article tanking at 6%?
Looking in the home page of the publication I found the answer: the title was cut off. What you saw was just “Your Significant Other Will Show Up When You Stop Looking (and Other…” Before a would-be reader could see that I was plainly calling the advice BS, they clicked.
What can I learn from this?
