How to be Human

... A dispatch from bewilderness

In my first life, I worked for Martha Stewart Living and Martha Stewart Weddings and Martha Stewart Holidays and Martha Stewart Kids and Christmas and Valentine’s Day. I also worked for The World’s Most Beautiful Man, so-named by People more than once and made headlines. Rather, wrote headlines on deadline.

Here’s why. People want to know what they’re going to get and nothing tells them that more quickly than numbers in headlines. Like 5 rules. Not just any number, though, the magic numbers.

3 is a magic number. It is better to have 3 rules than 2 or 4. 5 is a magic number. 7 is lucky. 6, 8, and 9 are unlucky. If you have 6 tips, add 1 or delete. Ditto, if you have 8. 10 is excellent, above, 10, everything is worthless until you hit 25, 50, 99, 100, and a 1001.

Folks love “how to” headlines, too. How to quit smoking in 30 days or your money back. How to write a novel in 30 days or your 30 days back. How to stop email you shouldn’t have sent. How to be human. How to lose weight fast and keep it off or you can kill me.

Headlines come in four flavors: Mad, Scared, Glad and Sad. Plus sex.

Sexy words include nouns like: sex, secrets, lust, action, burning, confessions, desire, body, trick, thong, turn-on, foreplay; verbs like crave, and adjectives like arousing, brazen, burning, dirty, forbidden, hot, inviting, luscious, naughty, provocative, racy, raunchy, scandalous, secret, shameless, sizzling, steamy, sultry, spicy, sweaty, temptress, tempt, tempting, torrid, vixen and X-rated.

There’s also a slew of things to make you mad. Angry words include:

Build a wall, backbiting, backstabbing, balk, betray, cheater, crooked, devious, deviant, double-crossing, hobble, jam, mudslinging, slander, smug, snarl, snob, snooty, snotty, stuck up, stymie, tarnish, underhanded, uproar, and, oh, yes, congress.

“Scare words” include, but are not limited to: apocalypse, Armageddon, collapse, crisis, danger, deadly, disgrace, embarrass, escalate, fail, fireworks, frantic, hack, hoax, IRS, leak, looming, lunatic, lurking, nightmare, panic, peril, plague, plummet, plunge, poison, shame, slur, smear, tank, teetering, terrorist, toxic, tumble, vaporize, and warn.

Peppered between fear and loathing is the feel-good news and inspiration. Feel-good words include:

Amazing, backbone, breakthrough, breathtaking, courage, daring, delight, devoted, electrifying, faith, go through the roof, grit, gumption, guts, heart, hero, hope, inspiration, inspiring, ironclad, magic, moxie, miracle, pluck, research, results, rousing, secure, soaring, towering, spirit, stirring, triumph, triumphant, uplifting, winner and winning.

Further feel-good words are meant to connote safety. These include:

Authentic, ironclad, no strings attached, proven, refund, research, secure, tested, unconditional.