The “Skimming” Experiment

I’ll let you in on a little secret. When I have nothing to write about, I think of the craziest thing I could possibly present on my blog, and then I do it.

And that’s what I did with my previous post called: Skimming.

That entire post was a social experiment. An ironic social experiment. Many failed. Many passed with flying colours. It was quite amusing.

Oh, and don’t you dare skim through this post!

Skimming was a post about how people skim read, rather than read the entire text. Then I intentionally wrote a really long paragraph, talking about how people skip over really long paragraphs!

In the middle of that long paragraph, I wrote: “Using one word, tell me your favourite colour in the comments below and nothing else.”

I don’t know, I’d say that is a pretty specific instruction! I put that in there just to see who actually read the entire paragraph.

I got way more comments than I was expecting. This explanation post wasn’t going to go up until tomorrow, but I had too many comments backing up. Yeah, I’m bragging.

The only thing I wanted in my comments section was a bunch of colours. I got many comments of just that.

I also got many comments of people stating their favourite colour and also giving a comment, which I didn’t want at first, but was happy to see. I massively underestimated people’s willingness to engage in conversation, especially after being told to just leave one word.

There were also many comments where people made no mention of a colour.

If you look at that long paragraph, I put some words in bold, five sentences after I gave the instruction to write your favourite colour in the comments.

That was meant to be a temptation. People normally gravitate toward bolded words. I thought if I put some words in bold, in a large paragraph, some people might be tempted to skip right to them. I don’t know if people did; I just know people overlooked my one line instruction.

Then near the end, I said: “Regardless, I knew I didn’t miss anything. That I read every word. That I didn’t miss any specific instructions. I can only hope there are others that are the same way.”

Those four sentences weren’t even me being honest! Those four sentences were supposed to be a wink-wink and a nudge-nudge to the people who read the prompt, while also, hopefully, guilting people into going back to read the long paragraph.

And then the conclusion of that post…

Since when do I ever end my posts with: “Well, I’ve said enough. Leave a comment below”? Never! I always have more than enough to say.

I don’t know. I thought those would be hints that something was fishy.

You all trust me so much!

The first person to provide me with a colour was the third person who commented.

I was literally fist pumping when someone put a colour in their comment.

I decided not to post comments until later in the day, so people wouldn’t be tipped off. In essence, I came off like a jerk for ignoring everyone.

By the way, I really enjoyed all the comments from people who said they read every single word. Yet they didn’t provide me with a colour! You all made me laugh today, thank you.

Please don’t hate me!

In reality, a lot of us do skim other posts here on WordPress. I get it. I do it, too. Some of us follow many blogs and simply don’t have the time to read every single one, word for word. Some of us are just lazy, which is fine.

I just wanted to do an experiment and see how many would notice if I planted a specific prompt in the middle of the post.

The results showed that many people did, and many people didn’t. Or they did, but didn’t know what to do with such responsibility.

As for the people who only liked the post and didn’t comment, I don’t know what to make of your antics.

Y’all better hope I didn’t plant any instructions in the middle of this post, too.