Blue Notes

Blue Notes

25 July 2015

The Catchy Titles Obsession

The 10 places to visit before you are six, the 5 most uncomfortable shoes in the world, the 7 outfits that every fashion blogger has published at least 15 times. Blogs are giving numbers.
If you do not place a number in your title, a top ten, a “best of”, nobody is going to read your post. Do you have something interesting to tell, to recommended? Do not write a personal text, with an introduction, a development and a conclusion. Why putting so much effort on it if you can summerize it in 5 easy points?

I’ve been seduced by this trend too. After all, lists make your text faster to read, easier and sometimes even funny. But what I’m pointing out here is that this is growing into a collective web obsession now. Like Instagram pics of photoshopped legs, like bragging to go to fashion week but without invitations, like Litas shoes five years ago.My daily Bloglovin feed seems the copy of itself, day after day. For every aspect of my life I find 10 easy steps of how I can improve it, in a blink of an eye. Are you harassed at work, did you split up with your boyfriend, are you depressed and discouraged? 1. Sit down. 2. Prepare yourself a nice cup of tea. 3. Buy flowers. 4. Put on your favourite dress. 5. Sign up for a yoga class. And all your problems will disappear.

OF COURSE. Each time I read those kind of tips, I guess I should sign in for a self-control class, not for a yoga one, to prevent destructive thoughts towards the author of the article. Since I imagine
myself beating her body with the nice flowers and sprinkle it with some good tea afterwards.
The good thing is that catching titles are not used by outfit bloggers (only), which are usually not known as stellar writers, but by sites and blogs that are considered the serious ones, the glossy web magazines with eight posts published per day. Those that once were written by journalists. If Instagram almost killed the blogs, the 10-point-posts are giving them a coup de grace. Appearance and standardization of the content, ladies and gentlemen. Seems it’s point 1. on the list to become successful on the web.
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8 comments

  2. Ben ma anche tu Devi imparare a scrivere…manca la conclusione a questo post!!!

    Anonymous

  3. I agree on the mostpart, but then again most people just go to the posts for the pictures and not text- especially if reading a blog not in your native language! (like this one is for me, except I do read the text and thank goodness you translate everything <3 )

    Alejka

  6. Giusto l'altro giorno mi sono imbattuta in un articolo dal titolo numerico "5 easy tricks to help you write catchy headlines" 😉

    doolally78

    • Ecco questo riassume proprio PERFETTAMENTE! 😀

      Erica Blue

  7. That's an interesting topic, haven't thought about it before!
    I sometimes find such lists annoying myself, but if fashion/ celebrity magazines do this on their websites, maybe they do this because they need to keep things simple so people will read them at all. Not all of their readers have a higher education or like to read much.
    On the other hand: A serious magazine should try to get people to read more and not make everything so easy that any 11-year-old could understand it!

    T.