How to create opium-like articles that users can’t stop reading? (Down)

Fear, excitement, novelty and confusion - what kind of topics are popular?

Perhaps it is because most of our team members have a background in biology and psychology, so we prefer to summarize and analyze what topics are popular among our readers from a psychological perspective. Most of the tools I will talk about below were provided by a colleague with a background in psychology.

• Why is negative news popular?
• Why is positive news frowned upon?

This familiar phenomenon can be easily explained using evolutionary psychology. Psychologists have done this by quickly flashing a group of photos in front of the subjects' eyes. Among neutral information (such as various plants), people are most likely to notice dangerous objects such as poisonous snakes and insects. In addition, among neutral-expression faces, people recognize negative emotions such as anger significantly faster than positive emotions such as happiness.

The aforementioned instinctive reactions are the product of human beings' long evolution. People who can respond more promptly to dangerous factors in the environment will have a higher chance of survival. The result of tens of thousands of years of gradual selection is that we are all carriers of genes that can produce instinctive reactions to dangerous factors.

Although both are danger signs, such as the radiation danger sign and the skull and crossbones sign, people will definitely be alert to the latter because the former is not a warning symbol based on our evolutionary learning. Even people who know it will not have an immediate reaction. As for the latter, you don’t need to be literate to make you nervous when you see it.

Negative news is actually classified as a dangerous factor when we process information. Because it is information that poses a potential threat to us personally, it will instinctively attract our high attention. Food poisoning, bridge collapse, forced demolition, and judicial injustice are all potentially dangerous information that can arouse our vigilance. This is the result of evolution.

As for positive energy news, we not only need to overcome our instinct to pay attention to dangerous information, but also select beneficial information from it. It must use acquired concepts to constantly guide self-domestication and persuasion. It needs to consume and occupy a huge amount of attention resources, and requires a lot of self-psychological construction. Human nature is to reject the excessive consumption of such psychological resources. Therefore, most normal people will dislike positive energy news.

However, it is not only negative information that can stimulate and mobilize people's emotions and attention. Important information can mobilize people's emotions and brain excitement.

What is important information? According to the standards of political science and journalism, different people will come up with different answers. However, judging from the order in which people learn and process information in neurocognitive science, the above answers are often inaccurate. Judging from people's real physiological reactions, the following definition is more reliable: "If the event/information is closely related to oneself, whether its nature is frightening, exciting, completely unfamiliar to the individual, or vague and uncertain, it is more likely to be marked as "important information" by the individual.

We can simplify the important information into four categories:

• Frightening
• Exciting
• Novel
• Confusing

Below are some of our articles by category: Excerpts from Elephant Association article titles

The titles of the articles in WeChat Moments that go viral among different groups of people are almost always of the aforementioned types. Moreover, the suggestiveness of the principle of information importance is brought to the extreme in terms of wording.

How to judge the spread of the topic, we can simplify the guidance according to the same mechanism. Cognitive neuroscience divides information into four categories from the perspective of learning and processing information:

1. Strange concepts appear in strange situations
2. Strange concepts appear in familiar situations
3. Familiar concepts appear in familiar contexts in predictable forms
4. Familiar concepts appear in familiar contexts in unexpected ways

Let us illustrate with an example. For example, I wrote articles like: "The Youth of King Shaka Zulu" and "The Rules of the Amish". Shaka is the name of the first king of the Zulu Empire established by the Zulu people in South Africa. The Amish are a very conservative, closed religious community in the United States that adheres to an ancient traditional lifestyle. This is a topic that is rarely discussed. It is a typical first category, where unfamiliar concepts appear in unfamiliar situations.

And "Why did Wang Mang use millet to connect music and weights and measures?" 》 belongs to the second category, that is, unfamiliar concepts appear in familiar situations.

As for the third category, most of the news that we are bombarded with in the media every day but fail to arouse our curiosity are of this type, such as the friendly talks between our country's leaders and Putin, and our country's various thriving and gratifying achievements - any information that you can skillfully fill in the predicate, attributive, and adverbial modifier in your mind when you see the subject and object is of this type. China is the country that produces the most information of this kind.

Generally speaking, much of the unexpected information we see can be classified as the fourth category. Mr. Zhao Zhongxiang, a man of both virtue and talent, was accused of seducing a female doctor. This kind of information is a typical example of the fourth category. To make an inappropriate analogy, if President Jiang had travelled abroad with his wife, it would have been the third category, but if he had travelled abroad with Song Zuying, it would have become the fourth category.

The fourth type of information stimulation is most likely to trigger learning and memory because it has the largest gap between expectations and reality. Therefore, themes such as rereading, parody, secret history, and rumor-busting are very popular - by reorganizing the materials, the familiar background and character development are reversed, creating a strong sense of "prediction error", thereby achieving the greatest degree of memorability and the greatest degree of dissemination.

The order of dissemination of these four types of information is:

1. Familiar concepts appear in familiar contexts in unexpected ways
2. Strange concepts appear in familiar situations
3. Strange concepts appear in strange situations
4. Familiar concepts appear in familiar contexts in predictable forms

Therefore, from the perspective of communication, no matter what the topic is, the above rules should be used to the greatest extent possible:

• Use as many examples or things as possible that are familiar to the audience and reinterpret them
• All ideas that the audience is expected to accept should be expressed as concisely and completely as possible.
• Minimize new concepts or examples that are difficult for the audience to remember or repeat

Let us give an example here. Regarding people's altruistic prosocial behavior, there is a clear priority ranking: for example, for men, women and children are given priority; for strangers of the same age and gender, if the degree of kinship can be determined by external characteristics such as race, skin color, and accent, those with closer kinship will be given priority; more importantly - in a patriarchal society, beautiful women are more likely to be given priority.

If we cannot cite familiar examples and things, such articles will hardly be widely disseminated. However, if we add things that we are all familiar with but can give us a completely new understanding and create a strong expectation dislocation effect, it will be widely disseminated.

For example, Xie Hailong took a lot of photos to promote the Hope Project. When viewed individually, each photo can produce a shocking effect. However, when you only have to choose one photo, everyone will unanimously choose Su Mingjuan with big eyes, because Su Mingjuan with big eyes is obviously more likely to arouse empathy than a little boy with a runny nose, which will have a good publicity effect.

Similarly, as long as you search on Weibo, you will find that every day in China, countless people who are unable to pay the high medical expenses for leukemia, burns, kidney disease, etc. seek help. Almost 100% of these people's hopes of seeking help are ultimately dashed. However, over the years, there has been a special exception, and that is Lu Ruoqing. Not only did she receive huge amounts of aid, but big Vs like Xue Manzi and Zuoyeben also visited her in person in the hospital.

The reason why Lu Ruoqing can arouse so much sympathy and attention is that she has an angelic face. If she was not young and beautiful, or if she was beautiful but had a baby, how could Xue Manzi and Zuoyeben visit her? She was so beautiful that when Fang Zhouzi doubted whether Lu Ruoqing really existed, it actually aroused the anger of many people.

Adding these familiar examples into articles on this topic will naturally greatly stimulate people's spread of the content, by making familiar things unfamiliar, or vice versa.

As addictive as opium - suspense, reward and resonance

This part of the content is a summary of article structure experience with a narrow scope of application. Perhaps it is only applicable to a large extent when the content is similar to our Elephant Guild, so I will try to talk about it briefly here.

Because our articles are extremely long and have a very high information density, they require continuous high attention both in terms of reading time and in order to understand and digest the content. However, today on mobile devices, attention is easily distracted at any time, and the two constitute a strong conflict. Therefore, we pay special attention to the structure of the article to continuously mobilize the reader's attention.

In terms of concepts, we will place special emphasis on the awareness of suspense, reading rewards and emotional resonance, because they are the most effective technical means to help us capture readers' attention.

Therefore, the structure and composition of the article must be in line with human nature and not anti-human.

What is anti-human writing?

• Can't get to the point quickly
• No plot or facts
• Lengthy value judgments
• Standard textbook text
• Can't inspire any suspense

The following text is a typical example of all anti-human writing methods:

According to the different ways in which a society maintains its order, commentators often distinguish two types of society: those ruled by law and those ruled by man. In a society ruled by man, when people take an action and consider the opposition, obstruction and sanctions they may encounter, they will focus on the attitude of the person in power and his relationship with themselves, whether that person is the emperor, the old Buddha, the secretary or the chief. In a society ruled by law, people are more concerned with customs and legal rules that do not depend on specific individuals and specific relationships.

Theoretically, there is a third possibility: a society ruled by virtue, in which order is also maintained by social rules that are unrelated to specific individuals, but the enforcement of the rules does not rely on coercion, and the correction of illegal behavior does not rely on physical punishment or forced deprivation. Social norms are maintained by peaceful means such as education, admonition and relationship isolation, and therefore there is no need to establish a government and judicial system. Such a harmonious and non-coercive state is also the social ideal of many ancient philosophers.

But this is just a utopian ideal. In reality, efforts to establish such a utopia often bring disasters, because there are always people who ignore social norms and do not hesitate to use violence. When they successfully establish violent organizations and coerce others, they can gain huge benefits. Therefore, those societies that do not take institutional precautions against this fundamental danger will inevitably become a society ruled by man. …

The above words are the beginning of a manuscript by one of our authors. This author is Whig, an author I like very much. Although his articles are almost all written in an anti-human way and I may not agree with all his views, his broad vision and strong insight are enough to offset his shortcomings of having no basic awareness and skills to spread his ideas.

It is difficult to ask someone like him who focuses on thinking to work hard to improve his communication awareness and skills; and our professional skills and tasks are to make these valuable contents, which are written in an anti-human way, become humane when they are disseminated.

Why emphasize suspense?

Long reading requires continuous concentration. If reading itself does not provide a rewarding experience, readers will need to continue to expend willpower. The most effective way to provide a sense of reward in reading is to constantly create suspense and induce readers' excitement. Therefore, a structure driven by suspense is the simplest way to keep people wanting more.

We have analyzed our own texts and found that articles with a high dissemination rate basically follow the structural pattern of continuous cycle of suspense setting, statement and analysis, suspense setting, and statement and analysis. In the text, suspense can be set up directly by asking questions, or by laying out facts or phenomena without leaving any trace, or even by making direct judgments.

Most examples of poor dissemination have poor structures. The ones with the worst readership are usually those that progress in a straightforward chronological order from beginning to end. Such articles are difficult to read from beginning to end, and even more difficult to forward after reading. Of course, this experience may only apply to ourselves.

Why emphasize reading rewards?

Suspense can only induce reading, but to stimulate forwarding and sharing, sufficient reading rewards are needed. If you can provide new knowledge to destroy the old cognitive framework, reconstruct cause and effect, and create a sense of "so that's how it is", the reader will experience a process of confusion, brewing, and then release in the process of obtaining this information. The surprise at the ending will stimulate the brain's reward center and release dopamine, a neurotransmitter related to the experience of happiness. This neural activity has been observed in response to gambling wins, taking addictive drugs, and sexual arousal.

The most typical examples of this kind of unexpected and expectation-defying reading reward are various jokes and memes.

Let's try an example:

"When people were shocked by Guo Jingming's sudden desperate expression of his deep love for the party and the country, some people responded with this: Forgive him, who didn't love the country when they were 5 feet 4 inches tall?

Memes and jokes are the most common means of increasing reading rewards, but among common categories, memes created by patterns such as homophones and misreadings often tend to be vulgar and shallow. For discerning readers, only memes that mobilize higher intellectual activities are worth appreciating.

Therefore, if you want people to be addicted to your articles like drugs, reading rewards are an essential element. The reward for reading is not just humor. Jokes and gags are a type of writing that takes a very short time to develop but has a strong effect. Some articles may seem bland at first glance, but after reading them you will feel an indescribable beauty and enjoyment. In fact, the psychological mechanism is similar, but it takes longer to develop emotions and create a unique artistic conception. This is the skill of the older generation of writers. Its blandness and lack of effort can easily give a sense of sophistication, but its rhythm and intensity are difficult to be widely accepted by contemporary people.

Today, there is also a kind of reading reward that relies on special text expression. This skill and awareness is almost exclusive to the post-90s generation. It is a brand-new model that has only appeared on mobile terminals and is very innovative.

Take the text of a public account called "深夜发媸" as an example. It uses a mixed text and picture format. The importance of pictures is no less than that of text. The most important thing is that its reading rewards mainly come from pictures, and pictures often form an unexpected gap with the previous text. Although I am not its target reader at all, and even find it difficult to accept its content, I can still get reading rewards from it. I think this is probably an example of how a product that uses enough intelligence will definitely impress people.

Regardless of whether it represents a future direction, it is obviously worthy of attention and study. For people over the age of 30, they need to be vigilant and not think that they are heroes who can order the mediocre masses to turn around when the wheel of history has long since rolled over your body.

When it comes to reading rewards, we pay special attention to the sudden and unexpected twist at the end of the text, and there are countless examples of this. The ideal situation is that your worldview will be changed after reading it, and it will also constitute a strong reading reward at the end.

Preset Easter eggs will encourage readers to feel the strongest pleasure when they finish reading the article. These few seconds will make them more willing to forward and share, thus completing secondary dissemination.

In addition, it can also become a tacit understanding and expectation formed between you and your readers. It is even effective against those who don’t like you. For example, he knows that he will most likely not like the ending of your article, but he still can’t help but read it. After reading it, he doesn’t forget to add a comment: The Elephant Guild is selling contraband again.

How to evoke resonance?

Resonance is a sense of community that transcends rationality and is evoked through mutual infection. Content products that can resonate have high added value. Since it is naturally difficult for people to like an abstract symbol or name, resonance naturally tends to condense and attach to a specific individual.

Judging from Hollywood's experience, the most convenient model to arouse resonance is that ideas and emotions are attached to stories, stories are attached to individuals, and individuals must have distinctive characteristics that are easy to recognize. Today, content production on mobile devices is becoming increasingly decentralized, facilitating the rise of personal brands with high appeal, and highly recognizable works are the basic prerequisite for establishing resonance and recognition.

Resonance also has high and low levels. The most basic and easiest to mobilize is obviously emotional resonance, but emotional resonance can easily recede like the tide. The resonance of values ​​is the most lasting and the highest level of resonance. It can even reshape a solid identity. Because values ​​that resonate often have external opponents, they will generate strong internal cohesion.

Value resonance is certainly the most worthy goal for content pursuers, because the success of some outstanding non-content brands is not only the success of the product itself, but also the success of value creation. A content producer (which can be text, music, film, television and other spiritual products) will have unparalleled and lasting magic if he can resonate with the values ​​of his audience.

For many years, there has only been one Chinese content producer who can do this: Cui Jian. But the person who is most successful in inspiring resonance of values ​​in China today is undoubtedly Luo Yonghao, but unfortunately, he is not a content producer, but a mobile phone producer.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

This article was compiled and published by the author @黄章晋 (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!