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The three-category search intent model is broken. Real search behavior is messier, more nuanced, and far more revealing about what content actually needs to deliver.

5 min read

The Taxonomy of Search Intent: Beyond Informational, Transactional, and Navigational

SEO textbooks teach that search intent falls into three neat categories: informational (learning), transactional (buying), and navigational (finding). This framework is twenty years old, based on pre-smartphone search behavior, and fundamentally...

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Aristotle understood persuasion better than most modern marketers. We examine how classical rhetoric's 2,400-year-old frameworks still explain why some marketing works and most doesn't.

5 min read

Marketing as Rhetoric: Classical Persuasion for Modern Brands

Aristotle wrote Rhetoric in 350 BCE. He identified three modes of persuasion: ethos (credibility), pathos (emotion), and logos (logic). Twenty-four...

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Your highest-performing content is decaying right now. Content entropy explains why articles lose rankings, traffic, and value—and what you can actually do about it beyond

5 min read

Content Entropy: Why Your Best Articles Lose Relevance Over Time

You published an article two years ago. It ranked #3 for a valuable keyword, drove consistent traffic, generated leads. You checked yesterday—it's...

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Marketing has entered its absurdist phase—messages that mean nothing, branding divorced from products, campaigns optimized for engagement over coherence. We examine why meaninglessness became a strategy.

4 min read

Absurdism in Advertising: When Meaning Breaks Down in Marketing Messages

"Live más." What does that mean? Taco Bell won't tell you. They've trademarked ambiguity, built a brand on linguistic emptiness that consumers fill...

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very UX designer knows dark patterns work. Fewer ask whether they should. We examine the ethical boundary between influence and exploitation—and why crossing it destroys long-term value.

4 min read

The Ethics of Dark Patterns: Where Persuasion Becomes Manipulation

Your modal window has three buttons. The one you want says "Maybe later" in gray, size 10 font. The one they want you to click says "YES! UPGRADE...

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Viral marketing didn't start with social media. We trace shareability's evolution from word-of-mouth to algorithmic amplification—and why understanding this history reveals what actually makes content spread.

4 min read

The Genealogy of Viral Marketing: Tracing the Evolution of Shareability

Before "viral" meant internet fame, it meant disease transmission. The metaphor was apt: ideas spread person-to-person, exponentially, through...

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AI has memory, context, and reasoning—but can't explain where conclusions came from. Here's why that opacity matters and what it means for trusting AI outputs.

5 min read

AI Can't Show Its Work: The Problem With Memory Without Explanation

I'm interested in how AI has memory and reasoning now, but then it can't explain its own logic. For me, I see those things as very contradictory. How...

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Your content lives longer than you think—and comes back to haunt or help you years later. Here's why every piece you publish matters more than ever before.

4 min read

Everything You Say Matters: Why Content Longevity Changes Your Strategy

Everything that we say, I think, is going to matter, and it's going to matter even more just going forward. It has to be high quality, it has to mean...

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Your audience isn't ignoring you—their brains have habituated to your patterns. Neuroscience reveals why consistent messaging creates neural blindness and how to break habituation without destroying brand identity.

4 min read

Habituation in Digital Marketing: When Repetition Kills Engagement

You send the same newsletter format every Tuesday. Same layout, same tone, same call-to-action placement. Open rates decline 3% monthly. You blame...

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Not all AI models work the same way. Here's why Claude Opus might solve your hallucination problem—and when to use Sonnet, ChatGPT, or Gemini instead.

3 min read

Why Opus Thinks Harder: A Practical Guide to Choosing the Right AI Model

I've been having hallucination problems with Claude lately—like, throw my laptop out the window level of frustration. It won't listen to me. It...

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