A website selling stuff is not only listing their best selling items, but 
also their worst selling items (I liked the "candle tongs the most...I guess you'd use them if you couldn't manage to blow out a one-inch flame, right?).
At first, I asked "why"? But then I found myself looking more at the stuff that wasn't selling than the stuff that was selling the most. I think it's because we always have a curiosity to see what people hate, and what's not working:
- Celebrity is happily married? Who cares. Celebrity gets caught cheating and has their marriage go up in flames? Gimme more information...pictures, too!
- Product cleans your bathtub just fine? Big deal. Product kills people who breath the fumes? 20/20 sends the undercover cameras into the labs.
We're drawn to what's worst, what's broken, what's disfunctional, what's weird. That applies to products and selling.
Don't believe me? Here's a test you're destined to fail:
Don't click here. DO NOT. It has an image so horrible and disgusting and repulsive that you will be sickened, or certainly offended. I found it on the internet. You DO NOT want to see it. Don't look at it. It's too strange.
Do you feel that temptation to look? Did you even make it down to this sentence without looking? If so, good for you. You saved yourself from a few nightmares tonight. Most of you, I'll bet, couldn't resist. You looked. Now you have to wrestle with the consequences.
There is a strange psychology behind selling using "the worst". But for some reason, we humans are wired that way. Selling using fear, threat of consequences, "what if" scenarios, and showing off "the worst we have to offer" works.
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