84,508 7th Graders Have Probably Plagiarized Me for Science Class
Just about four years ago, eHow offered me some quick, dirty money to write some quick, dirty web content. A lot of it was sciencey stuff. As it happens, I like writing sciencey stuff. Plus, there was money.
So I did it. It was four years ago, so I've naturally forgotten pretty much all of it by now, but this one popped up recently. I remember it being part of the first batch of sciencey articles I wrote for eHow. I remember that because I normally have a lot of questions for a new client. I ask things like...
...what kind of voice do you prefer?
...you want I should go all AP style on this?
...what's the reading comprehension level of your audience?
This was eHow, though, so I didn't bother asking. They had an army of underpaid freelancers back in 2010 whose job it was to just shut up and churn this stuff out, and I was getting like $5 more per article than most of those guys. I was special, apparently. I shouldn't need to ask that stuff. I should just know. Also, they were too busy to answer me anyway, so I just got to churning.
I figured most of the people who would one day read these articles would be middle school kids who had to write a paper. Since I didn't have any direction, I just thought back to my own middle school textbooks and then challenged myself to reach for their demographic.
And, as it turns out, if you really rush through something and don't care much about it, you can easily emulate the bland, uninformative and frankly soulless delivery of a 7th grade science textbook.
Now here we are in 2014, and the internet tells me this article has been viewed 84,508 times. That's 84,508 7th graders who came looking to plagiarize something better than what their textbooks could tell them about titration... and they got me instead.
My apologies to all of those kids. If I thought anyone would ever read this, I'd have made up some formula that came out to "60065" or "35007"... Or whatever other dirty words the kids are spelling on their calculators these days. You know, something to make it interesting. That, or I would've at least tried to be more like Bill Nye.
In hindsight, the whole thing is just one big ball of "meh". A client wanted some content. They were not paying premium rates. Therefore, they did not get premium content. That was all well and good when it was just some copy I'd kicked out to generate ad revenue, but it's a little embarrassing now that I'm sure it's going to stick around.
Let's file this one under "Live and Learn", and let's all resolve not to rush our content to the public anymore. From now on, let the public wait a little longer, then give them something worth waiting for.
That, or be prepared to be a source of mediocre essays for years to come.