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Comment by jacksonkmarley | Hacker News Reader

This article had 2 very noticeable features.

1) It was incredibly full of fluff. The actual content was actually not unuseful, it made me want to start practicing handstands, but the whole thing could have been quite brief without all the memes and marketing.

2) The gifs of the exercises (not the memes) were far superior for a reader compared with embedding, or worse linking, youtube videos. They did both here but I was already in skimming mode from all the fluff. I've read a lot of articles on gym stuff lately and it's pretty annoying having to repeatedly scan through 20 min videos for a 5 second demonstration.

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I couldn’t agree more. Why the author would want their long-form writing to resemble a concatenated tweet thread is beyond me; do they assume a short attention span in their audience?

> do they assume a short attention span in their audience

Yes. It’s probably a valid assumption. We are not necessarily their target market.

> We are not necessarily their target market.

I wonder who your "we" refers to? I mean the site is called "Nerd Fitness", seems to me like we, the average HN reader, are exactly their target market :-)

It doesn't help that the fluff is inaccurate.

> A handstand is one of the coolest exercises ever, but it’s also one of the most advanced moves to learn.

I doubt any gymnast would agree with either point.

No, but nerds doing fitness very well might!

There far fewer gymnasts than general population so I'm not sure their opinions matter as much to your average slacker nerd who are trying to impress their friends and not gymnasts?

It's standard clickbait spam practice, to fit more ads and affiliate links. Just say no and don't scroll down.

Did you even look at the article? There's no ads, no affiliate links. (unless you call the authors offering their professional services ads, of course)

The first thing I saw was an ad, although you're right that it's an ad for the author. The whole thing looks like an ad filled with more ads, but I guess they're just memes and YouTube links. I tune out anything that looks like that.

Immediate turn off to be honest

Maybe simply because they like to have fun, and this is funny to a lot of people?

Don't be so aggressive just because they've got a different understanding of humor then you do.

this is a pretty good breakdown of the handstand progression

>https://antranik.org/comprehensive-handstand-tutorial/

I disagree. I think the article was very well written, considering it's basically just an SEO page.

1) First of all, it starts with a short, numerated table of contents at the very top that includes everything that the article covers (with clickable links so you can skip the fluff)

2) It includes textual descriptions, videos and GIFs that make it very easy to understand the exercises.

3) The article also explains not just WHAT you should do, but also WHY you should do it

4) It's written in an entertaining way (it's a matter of taste, but I kinda like it)

5) While they do try to sell their stuff, it's pretty transparent and they are not hiding anything behind a paywall.

I’m interested in the topic and also found the memes quite cool but yes the other stuff and too much off topic text is a huge downer.

SEO my friend

Perverse Incentives

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive

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