You all come up with so many good ideas for prompts, but we can’t write them all.
So today we’re giving a second chance to prompts that *almost* won a poll, but didn’t.
Whose pleas for another chance will we heed? YOU decide!
During the last stream, the subscribers voted that we write some revived prompts.
Watch a short version of the stream here or scroll down for what we wrote.
I picked a bunch of prompt suggestions that got a bunch of votes in previous streams, but didn’t get written, to give them a second chance.
The first one that chat voted for was: You are a clickbait artist.
Here’s what we wrote:
Josie Tyler had reached the final round of the clickbait competition. As an experienced freelance clickbait-specialist for eleven years running, she wielded rage-inducing titles like King Arthur wielded Excalibur, she painted curiosity-clicks like Van Gogh brushing his soothing starry oils.
She was a clickbait artist.
The clickbait titles from Josie and her opponent were displayed on the giant screen atop the competition stage, in front of a digital audience of millions. Both of them had been tasked with coming up with a clickbait title for an article on healthy fruits, and looking at the competition, Josie could only shake her head:
How to live forever by eating these nine fruits!
Pathetic. Her opponent had made the amateur mistake of promising too much. No one would expect to actually live forever; they’d just roll their eyes and move on. Josie’s title, by comparison, was like a cool oasis amid the internet desert, tantalizing any netizen who stumbled upon it:
Eight fruits that will add decades to your life (you won’t believe number nine!)
Perfection. Not only would the title entice the small-brained folk who would love to gain back the years they’d lost from smoking and being violently overweight, but it would also generate the coveted anger-clicks with the numbers not lining up.
So many people loved nothing more than clicking on articles just to make a nasty comment to the author about how they were wrong about something. How their title was off somehow. But, at the end of the day, their click brings the same revenue as anyone else.
Josie watched with a knowing smirk as the numbers went up and up for her title. The millions watching were clicking on it thousands at a time, leaving her opponent’s in the dust with only a mere couple hundred.
When it reached one million clicks, the screen emitted a blasting fanfare, declaring Josie the winner. She did her best to look both surprised and humbled as she walked forward on the stage to accept her prize.
“But wait!” came an announcement. “Josie Tyler, before you are made Master Clickbaiter, you have one final opponent.”
Josie was a little disappointed, but shrugged it off. She’d defeated a dozen other wannabes on her way up. If she had to slay one more, then no big deal.
“Your final opponent is… the clickbait artificial intelligence, The Clickinator.”
The screen that had been displaying Josie’s victory now flashed into a menacing, pixelated snarl. For the first time, Josie felt fear.
But she shook it off. For years, internet scientists had been trying to create clickbait algorithms, but all they’d ever produced so far was gibberish. This was nothing more than a little exhibition to the audience on how clickbait was still solely a human endeavor. An art more than a science.
“The topic for your clickbait title is…” the announcer said. “The economics of internet videos.”
Josie almost laughed out loud. This was easy.
In fact, it was too easy.
The Clickinator instantaneously spat out its answer:
Never work more than 5 hours a week again!
Josie had to admit, that was pretty good. Taking an article about how some people got lucky raking in a couple thousand dollars on YouTube, and baiting viewers into thinking they could do the same and change their lives was pretty cunning on the AI’s part.
She began to worry about her own submission, but she’d made her choice. She sent it in.
Get rich quick with these three easy steps!
The clicks from the audience came pouring in. At first it was evenly split, but then it slowly began to increase for The Clickinator. Slowly at first, then more and more, its numbers ran ahead of Josie.
Then the same blasting fanfare, but this time it wasn’t Josie’s title that stood as the winner. It was The Clickinator’s, by several hundred thousand votes.
The arena fell into stunned silence, then erupted into chaos. Millions of faces furiously clicking away, typing articles, making reaction videos. The upset was already taking the entire internet by storm.
Just as Josie had planned.
As a true clickbait artist, she always had to keep the bigger picture in mind. Crafting beauty wasn’t about any single clickbait-title, just as a dot-painting wasn’t about any single dot. It was what they all came together to look like when you sat back and zoomed out.
No one would ever click on “human beats AI again, yawn.” But the titles that were already going up about “computers win again,” “our dystopian robot future is nearer than you think,” “300-IQ AI destroys human professional in epic battle of wits” were the exact clickbait that Josie lived for.
After that, chat voted for this one: Kid writes sonic fanfiction, knows way too much sonic lore, has to read his story in front of his whole creative writing class.
Here’s what we wrote:
Terry shuffled to the front of his eighth grade English class, the story he’d written to share for today already moist with his palm sweat and crinkled from how hard he was gripping it.
It had seemed like a good idea to write this the night before. The words had just flowed out of him so easily. But now standing in front of his twenty-six other classmates, all of them groaning with their eyes, he was acutely aware of the silence that his story was supposed to be breaking right now.
He cleared his throat, felt like his entire body was a hot bubbling cauldron of nausea, and began to read.
“The title of my story is,” Terry said, “Sonic’s New Friend.”
Everyone in class grumbled and collapsed on their desks, rolled their eyes, whispered snickers to each other: “Here we go again.”
But Terry kept going. It’s what Sonic would do.
“Sonic was always very popular and surrounded by friends. He was a hero who had saved the world on more than one occasion, and everyone loved him. But that wasn’t the case for the new kid on South Island: Terry.”
“Mrs. Carlyle,” one of the kids in class asked, shooting her hand in the air. “Can I go to the bathroom, please?”
“Me too!” said another.
“Stop it,” Mrs. Carlyle snapped back. “If I have to listen to this, then so do you. Finish up quick please, Terry.”
Terry didn’t respond. He was in the zone. Sky High Zone.
“Terry was nervous starting as a new student at Sonic School. Everyone else had cool things, and he didn’t. Tails had tails to fly with, and Knuckles had knuckles to climb walls, but all that Terry had was his embarrassing long hair that would glow purple whenever he got horny.”
“Enough!” Mrs. Carlyle said, shooting up on her feet behind her desk. “Terry, get back to your seat.”
But Terry kept going. He was in the zone. Mystic Cave Zone.
“When Terry met Sonic, his hair glowed as purple as Barney’s engorged dinosaur tail. He’d never felt more aroused in his life. Sonic was so beautiful. His emerald green eyes, his curvaceous blue hair, his buttery smooth legs. Terry imagined being lathered all over by them as he slowly removed Sonic’s shoes, being the first to see his naked feet and sniff their rancid odor that he would devote his life to scrubbing away.”
A splatter came from the front row of seats as one of the girls threw up on the floor. Everyone shrieked and backed away. Mrs. Carlyle stormed over to Terry and grabbed him by the arm.
“Go get the janitor!” she said. “You need to help clean this up, pronto.”
But Terry kept going. He was in the zone. Star Light Zone.
“‘Terry,’ Sonic said. ‘Your hair is amazing.’ ‘No, it’s not,’ Terry said. ‘It’s embarrassing.’ ‘But it’s powered by friendship!’ Sonic said. ‘And the purple chaos emerald. Didn’t you notice that whenever you’re nearby a true friend, your hair glows purple?’ ‘Oh, I thought it was something else,’ Terry said. ‘Nope,’ Sonic said. ‘In fact, when Eggman attacks, you can shine the light to lead the way! Because you’ll always be surrounded by friends here in—’”
Bam. One of the bigger kids grabbed Terry by the side and yanked him away, kicking and flailing with his story in hand. It took the teacher and another student to hold him still as they dragged him through the halls, screaming the rest of his story.
“‘Hey do you want a chili dog!’ Sonic said! ‘Yes, I do!’ Terry said! Sonic winked at him! ‘Nothing beats a chili dog and a good foot soak after a long day! Hey, you wouldn’t happen to know how to use a foot sponge, would you!’”
But Terry was no longer in the zone. Not even Death Egg Zone. No one was listening to his story. He sat alone in the hall outside the principal’s office. The door opened.
“Terry?” Principal Brooks asked, peeking her head outside. “Why don’t you come in for a minute?”
Terry slunk in after her and plopped onto a chair. Principal Brooks sighed.
“This is number what, Terry?” she asked. “Five? Six?”
“Seven,” Terry said. “Just like the number of chaos emeralds.”
The principal shook her head. “Sure, sure. First it was climbing on the walls in gym class like… what was it? Nookles?”
“Knuckles,” Terry mumbled.
“Right. Then you dyed your hair and skin blue too. Then you drew Sanic all over your math test and failed. And now you’re reading what I’ve been told is an inappropriate story in front of the class. Is that right?”
“It’s not inappropriate,” Terry said. “It’s just what I wrote. My brain works better when it thinks about Sonic.”
Principal Brooks looked like she was about to open her mouth to admonish Terry again, but she sat back in her chair, contemplating him.
“Terry,” she said. “Can you tell me what fourteen times five is?”
Terry shook his head. Whenever he heard questions like that, he felt like he was stuck in Scrap Brain Zone.
“This blue character you like,” she continued. “He uses… what are they? Golden rings of power?”
“Just rings,” Terry said. The principal leaned across the desk.
“Let’s say every time Sonic eats a chili dog, he gets fourteen rings. And he’s eaten five chili dogs. How many rings does he have now?”
“Seventy rings!” Terry said, sitting up straight. He didn’t even need to count on his fingers, just imagining them in his head was far faster. Principal Brooks nodded.
“How about this, Terry?” she asked. “I’ll tell your teachers to make a little leeway for the Sonic stuff, maybe even change up some questions on your homework for you. But in return, I ask that you don’t talk in class about anything… arousing anymore. How about that?”
Terry couldn’t agree fast enough. He felt like he was in the Green Hill Zone — off to a fresh, new start.
Almost as fresh as Sonic’s feet after a good scrubbing.
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Top images: Unsplash