You could just be honest and say, "I had a crappy day and need someone to talk to. Message me if you've got some time." But this approach fell flat in our focus groups, far behind more proven marketing techniques like offering to enter the listener into a sweepstakes for every minute they listen to you, or promising a surprise guest, or just vaguebooking.

I, for one, would prefer a return to the more direct sensationalism of our youth. "How was my co-worker unfair to me today, and did I end up dissolving her in a vat of acid? Anyone who wants to know, please send me a message." People who don't want to hear your story don't feel obligated or manipulated, and people who do will also get an exciting fictional epilogue about a close call with acid, which is the least you can do to pay them back for their time.

"And when I finished, this was all that was left of him."

The people who push these things know they get yelled at when they bring them up, but they don't accept that this is because they are wrong and their ideas are awful and that Cars 2 was deservedly left off the Oscar nomination list. They think that it's a taboo subject that people have a "knee-jerk" reaction to, and if they just approach it a little bit sideways, and people don't realize they're talking about dog fucking or segregating black people at first, they'll be able to get them to think more "open-mindedly" about the subject, once they've cleared them of silly cultural preconceptions like racism being bad.

Instead of starting out with "Don't you agree that black people have lower IQs and are best suited for physical labor?" they try to avoid setting off any alarms by framing it as a discussion about genetics and evolution, opening with "Everyone agrees that genetics have at least some effect on different traits, such as intelligence, right?" If you say yes, they hope to lead you, like some kind of Socrates, through the steps of what they believe is a clear and logical pathway toward realizing that black people should be put in a warrior caste.

Which doesn't make any sense, since the Ultimate Warrior is clearly white.

Or they might post a link to a new study or book and say, "This guy sure has some controversial things to say about race and intelligence. I don't know what to make of it myself! What do you guys think?" Once people start debunking the study, the original poster starts to "play devil's advocate," in a friendly way at first, saying, "Yeah, that sure is an extreme point he is making! But I think there is some truth to it and we can't ignore the whole thing. Like this part ..." As you debunk that, he will get more frustrated and eventually openly argue for whatever the article says. Keep it going long enough and he will just snap and pretty much start making Nazi salutes and reciting Mein Kampf.

This person is imagining himself as Socrates, leading you wisely through a bunch of questions to discover the truth (which means whatever he is pushing) for yourself. What he is actually doing is playing King of the Mountain without telling anyone else that they're playing. He gets up on the mountain and invites people to come climb because he "wants to see other people's climbing techniques." Then, as you start climbing and showing him your footholds and such, he kicks you in the face and starts knocking all the other climbers off, and they're just as surprised as you were.

See, you can feel like you are "winning" an argument if you are the only one arguing and everyone else is just casually trying to help you answer the question you claimed to innocently need help with, in the same way you can "win" a fight if you ask someone to help you fix your computer and you stab him in the back while he looks at it. It doesn't make them wrong or a sucker, it makes you a dishonest asshole.

On a gaming forum, you can ask for "help" beating the final boss on Legendary or Extreme or Insane mode or whatever, six hours after the release of the game. Or a car enthusiasts' forum: "The Mazda 3 is listed as having a curb weight of 2,969 lbs. but I was able to lift mine easily the other day. I'm wondering if the dealer ripped me off, and some of the parts might be missing?"

I have to say that making these up can be fairly addicting. I suggest having a contest to come up with these in your particular Internet community. It can be pretty discouraging for someone to come in and try to pull it off when there's a posted fake example of the very tactic they're about to try. We had a game on the Cracked forums a while ago. This was my entry:

Hey guys. My dog threw up today and I am worried it might have bulimia. I really need some advice from you guys because I don't know a lot about bulimia, since I have a naturally perfect figure. All the boys always tell me I am very good looking, but I don't know if I believe them. I feel like I'm really ugly. I bet you guys would probably think I'm ugly, too. If you go to my website here, there are some pictures of me wearing a bikini, so you can see for yourself how ugly I am! LOL! I think the problem might be that my boobs are too big. It makes me feel fat sometimes. I have thought about taking up bulimia actually, but after seeing my dog throw up today, I was so traumatized that I've changed my mind.

Anyway, so my question is, can dogs have bulimia? What should I do? If it helps, I have some pictures of the dog. That's me in the bikini holding it. Sorry I'm so ugly!

"And here's another picture of my dog!"

Everybody's got a blog or a web comic or a Twitter account these days (or has a friend with one), so pretty much everybody is familiar with the temptation to flog your crap wherever you go. Most of us have the sense and consideration to tamp down this instinct and confine our self-promotion to appropriate times and places. Otherwise, the Internet would be filled with a million advertisements for blogs and YouTube videos, blotting out any actual content people would like to read.

The more self-centered among us, however, feel that they deserve to spam their shit more than anyone else does, which means they eschew "promote your blog here" areas and try to sneak links to their terrible work into general interest areas by pretending they "just found" this brilliant video or web comic, or are "wondering what people think" about this "funny" blog article.

"Pardon me, good sir! I just stumbled across a marvelous play called Hamlet."

Usually, one big clue is the number of views something has. If someone links a nine-view YouTube video they "just found," it's pretty safe to say they "found" it by clicking on the link after their upload was complete. Another hint is the fresh, never-posted-before sock-puppet accounts that often follow the initial link, posting, "Great stuff! I liked (terrible part)!"

Probably one of the best examples of this is a fellow known as Douche Quadbike, or Ben Ryan Metzger, a guy who was desperate to star in the new Captain America movie despite his tragic handicap of being unable to act. Before coming up with the strategy of making a video of himself as Captain America, a brilliant idea that would take years to formulate, he went at his goal by making a video where he rode an ATV and pushed around some tires and bales of hay to spell some woman's name for some reason. Hey, he's an actor, not a writer.

He visited about a million forums and posted this same exact post:

The funniest part is that no human being would be moved to tears by that video, except maybe tears of laughter. Unfortunately, after being laughed at by the entire Internet, he finally took the video private, but you can see the whole thing here, with a better soundtrack by Sanchez:

And here's the techno remix:

Nobody else would have any stories, and any responses would have to be about me and my story. But I technically opened it up to everybody, so I can pretend to be sad and hurt if anyone accuses me of trying to get attention for my boring story.

The best approach, really, is to just start a blog. I know "get a blog" is starting to be an insult to Internet storytellers the same way "get a room" is to ugly affectionate couples, but seriously, it's a great place to practice your storytelling, and people who went there knowing you were going to talk about yourself are probably going to be in a better mood than someone you sprung it on unexpectedly.

To be even safer, you can add a participatory cover-up, like the "let's hear your stories" thing, where you ask everyone else to post pictures of themselves with hats, or swords, or whatever. Advice to anyone participating in these threads: Please take the price tag off your item before posing with it.