I started using the social bookmarking service del.icio.us back in 2005, and soon became a del.icio.us ur-tagger for what I considered a fairly interesting URI. Definition: ur-tagger–one who holds the first position in the history list of users who’ve tagged a URI on del.icio.us.
Becoming an ur-tagger for a link isn’t hard. But a link can only have one ur-tagger. It’s not like an explorer getting to name a river, but it’s something.
The only link of note for which I became an ur-tagger is http://del.icio.us/popular/toread. Popular toread is, in del.icio.us terms, the currently most popular links tagged with “toread”, updated about every 4 hours. These links point to interesting and often substantial articles requiring deeper thought by voracious information addicts engaged in drive-by surfing.
Over the past couple of years, the conceptual center of the popular/toread migrated around several distinct strong attractors. Once, it was all about in-depth visual design or computer science articles. Later, the whole GTD craze played out in popular/toread, as if the 43folders community started using it as their personal blogroll. Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker articles pop in every now and then, and once in awhile Bertrand Russell is trotted out as the atheists arise. Pop psychology is big; Paul Graham is big.
Careful examination of the popular/toread links has led to these essential tips in cracking the top items. Follow them and achieve fame.
#1 Be Steve Pavlina.
Pavlina is the blogger-cum-guru who dishes out self-help and personal development tips. His articles range from the practical (How to Become an Early-Riser) to the transcendental (his intention-manifestation attempt to have his readership will their way to $1 million). He’s the Chuck Norris of motivational writers, only an alternate-universe Chuck Norris who, rather than dispensing roundhouse kicks, instead traveled around teaching Dale Carnegie courses to the bad guys. In addition, Pavlina is a polyphasic sleeper, an achievement not even Chuck Norris could claim.
Make your life a motivational performance art/laboratory, and you too can crack del.icio.us/popular/toread like Pavlina. In this vein, I’m starting my own intention-manifestation project in the collective consciousness: I am willing this post to create a butterfly effect that lands Steve Pavlina on Oprah.
#2 If you can’t will yourself to become Steve Pavlina, become like Steve Pavlina.
Write long articles. Cultivate a tone that sounds like the kind of neighbor who’d mow your lawn while you’re on vacation and even edge the sidewalk–Ned Flanders without the religion or the hi-diddly-ho. The kind of person who’d help you change a tire on the interstate and then wash your windshield with Windex and paper towels he keeps in his trunk. That guy.
#3 Include a number in the title.
Any number will do. Even numbers seem to be in right now, but prime numbers never go out of style. If you want to come across as web 2.0-savvy, go prime: 37signals, 43folders. David Beckham (#23)—prime. Bill Buckner (#6)—non-prime. Michael Jordan in basketball (#23)—prime. Michael Jordan in baseball (#45)—non-prime. Twenty-five percent of Pavlina’s most popular articles have numbers in the title. (Another 25% have “how to” in it.)
#4 Pay homage to the Getting Thing Done (GTD) lifestyle.
The GTD gestalt is best exemplified by the 43folders and Lifehacker communities. (Did you catch the prime number?) You may have seen GTDers at work—moleskine notebooks in hand full of preprinted task list templates, systems designed to promote Mental Health through Better List-Making, all the trappings of a religion, service starts promptly at 5:17PM every third Friday at Office Depot. The GTDers purposefully bee-line from place to place, always taking the inside corner, on cubicle turns, timers on desks, zero messages in their inboxes. The toread tag performs as a mental fishing net for this crowd, snagging the deferred articles the Cult of GTD has deigned to be Quadrant II material—important, but not urgent.
#5 Write like you’re two beers into it.
I think it was Dave Barry who said that the secret of writing funny was to write like he’d already had two beers without actually drinking two beers. Or maybe it was four. Steve Yegge, of Stevey’s Drunken Blog Rants, wrote most of his frequently del.icio.us-ed articles after a few glasses of wine. Reading a Yegge article is like riding in the backseat of a car when you were eight, winding through country roads not exactly knowing where you were going but then arriving at a place which turns out to be precisely and inevitably the place you want to be. Sure, you could have just taken the quick exit off the interstate to get to grandpa’s house, but why miss out on all the scenery along the way? (A suspected corollary—change your name to Steve, as it appears to be a popular blogging name. Steve Pavlina. Steve Yegge. Fake Steve Jobs. Three Steves. Three is prime. Coincidence?)
#6 Pretend to have a degree in pop psychology.
Watching what turns up on popular/toread gives a view into the psyche of the typical del.icio.us user. You come away understanding that the prototypical user is an atheistic web developer, stressed about getting things done, needing a little financial advice, unable to figure out people from a social perspective. Tap into this. Write psychological “how tos”, “whys” or “whats”. How to Deal with Difficult People. How to Get Good Service at a Restaurant. Why Women Think Men Think That Women Think Men Hate Women Who Think They’re Not Thinking. Why our Brains Hate Us. What GTD and Prozac Have in Common. Even if you don’t have a clue about human psychology, pull the George Costanza do-the-opposite trick: write what you typically do to interact with people, and then negate the title of the article. Instead of writing How to Have Witty Dinner Banter you instead write How NOT to Horrify Your Guests with Tales of Your Most Recent Medical Condition. Remember: ”It could be that the purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others.”
#7 Use imperative sentences.
Use them in your titles. Use them in your post. Use them until your audience is hypnotized by your command and fails to notice your fake psychology degree, or your deceptive use of prime numbers, or the fact that you aren’t Steve Pavlina. Use them to sound authoritative. Use imperative sentences so that your piece sounds important enough to read, and use them frequently enough that you appear to be such a fount of wisdom and they’re convinced to save your work to read later.
Conclusion
These tips, if followed with a slavish, cult-like focus, will put you on the road to fleeting del.icio.us/popular/toread fame, my friend, if your intention manifests it to be so. Now go out there, register that domain (as of today, the domain 97moleskines.com is still available) and start writing. Or else Steve Pavlina will find you and kick your ass.
