About time we had a one weird old tip thread. Anyone here got one? It has to be one, it has to be weird, it has to be old, it has to be a tip.

Pre-Columbian arrow head.

Prepare to Be Shocked!
What happens when you actually click on one of those “One Weird Trick” ads?
By Alex Kaufman|Posted Tuesday, July 30, 2013, at 3:00 PM

You’ve seen them. Peeking out from sidebars, jiggling and wiggling for your attention, popping up where you most expect them: those “One Weird Trick” ads. These crudely drawn Web advertisements promise easy tricks to reduce your belly fat, learn a new language, and boost your credit score by 217 points. They seem like obvious scams, but part of me has always wanted to follow the link. What, I wonder, makes the tricks so weird? How come only one trick (or sometimes “tip”), never more? Why are the illustrations done by small children using MS Paint? I’ve never pursued these questions, though, because a fear of computer viruses and identity theft has always stayed my hand. One curious click, I imagine, and I could wake up hogtied on an oil tanker headed to Nigeria.

Thankfully, Slate has allowed me to slake my curiosity, and yours. They gave me a loaner laptop, a prepaid debit card, and a quest: to investigate these weird tricks and report back to you. I also contacted a bevy of marketing experts to help me parse what I found. The individual tricks themselves are peculiar, but the larger trick—of why this bizarre and omnipresent marketing strategy works—tells us a lot about what makes us click, buy, and believe.

Full report: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/07/how_one_weird_trick_conquered_the_internet_what_happens_when_you_click_on.html

What about all the weirdness? “A word like ‘weird’ is not so negative, and kind of intriguing,” says Oleg Urminsky of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. “There’s this foot-in-the-door model. If you lead with a strong, unbelievable claim it may turn people off. But if you start with ‘isn’t this kind of weird?’ it lowers the stakes.” The model also explains why some ads ask you to click on your age first. “Giving your age is low-stakes but it begins the dialogue. The hard sell comes later.”

Poorly drawn graphics are a deliberate choice as well. “People notice when you put something in the space that’s different, even if it’s ugly,” Urminsky says. “This might hurt the brand of established companies, but the companies here have non-existent or negative brand associations, so it may be worth it for the extra attention.”

Plus, “if the ad were too professional, it might undermine the illusion that it’s one man against the system,” Norton says. Slick ads suggest profit-hungry companies, not stay-at-home moms or rogue truth-tellers trying to help the little guy.

There may be another reason for the length and shoddiness of the ads. “The point is not always to get the customer to buy the product,” Urminsky says. “It may be to vet the customer. Long videos can act as a sorting mechanism, a way to ‘qualify your prospects.’ Once you’ve established this is a person who’ll sit through anything, you can contact them by email later and sell them other products.”

“Those Nigerian prince scams are not very convincing,” he adds, “but they’re meant not to be. If you’re a skeptical person, the scammers want to spend as little time with you as possible. These videos may screen people in a similar way.”

Anyway the only weird old tip I’ve discovered recently:

To make the inside of your frying pan permanently brown, fry some bread in it for too long on too high a heat.

…and it seems those “Lose belly fat each day with this one weird old tip (or trick)” ads are all selling extracts of açaí or gambooge etc.

I don’t think I’ve ever noticed these weird old tip things.

I suppose I must subconsciously screen them out.

My tip is for everyone to do likewise. (Not that old a tip I suppose)

Some people rarely seem to get them. I often get them, as well as the DERMATOLOGISTS HATE HER! mom who is 58 but looks 25, and is usually shown enticingly peeling off her face.

How about:

“Do not go gentle into that good night”

That’s a tip, is fairly old, and might be considered weird.

I thought of marketing a tip myself (open your curtains more often to let sunshine in) with this spiel:

PHYSICISTS HATE HER! Mom provides free nuclear fusion for her home with this one weird old tip.

CATS: Ha ha ha ha @ arrow head

Emeryville shellmound

why is Emeryville shellmound weird?

the smell

Michael V said:

Pre-Columbian arrow head.

Hahaha :D

(I have a few arrow heads from around here….)

Just read the thread title as was abut to go into a long spell about my first triffle with a bit of acid.

Damm…:)

google the national animal of scotland

Princess Ozma

Thomas Phillip O’Neill, Jr.

dv said:

Thomas Phillip O’Neill, Jr.

.

Nice one dv! :)