Welcome to David B. Clear’s Medium Page
- Top for my most popular stories.
- Archive for a list of all my long-form stories.
- Comics if all you care about are silly drawings and laughs.
- Oh So Clear for my essays on writing.
- I Wanna Know for fun explainers and curiosities.
- My Newsletter to get notified by email whenever I publish a new story.
- FAQ if you want to know more about me.
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Oh So Clear
Or why I don’t think of you as my competition
Hey you! Yes, you, the one reading this. What do you think you’re doing putting words up on the Internet?! Do you think you’re a writer?! Those are my readers you’re trying to woo! What? You knew them first? Well, I don’t give a frog. They’re mine now!
This is the evolutionary explanation
We do really weird things that don’t seem to make any sense. Teenage boys get erections while staring at slabs of glass hooked up to wires, toddlers remain motionless for hours in front of light-emitting plastic boxes, girls obsess about the relationships of people they’ll never ever meet, and you seek out news every day about events that have no possibility of impacting your life in any way whatsoever.
The world you live in has been engineered to captivate you as effectively as a lightbulb captivates a moth. As a result, you engage in behaviors that are as ludicrous as…
This is how it keeps you awake
Ah, caffeine. It’s the one drug you can freely admit being addicted to without any social repercussions. Just imagine if it was anything else. “Ugh, I’m all grumpy in the morning until I’ve had my shot of heroin.” “I can’t get through a workday without my whiskey.” “No worries, boss. I’ll do it after my meth break.” “Hey mom! Come on in! I was just about to prepare myself a fresh line of coke. Do you want some?”
But have you ever wondered how caffeine actually works? …
Oh So Clear
Information gaps and the manufacturing of curiosity
How do I keep you reading? How do I make sure you read this sentence and the next one? How do I compel you to consume line after line as eagerly as an over-caffeinated word-snorting anteater?
Well, asking questions is a good start. Whenever I ask a question to which you don’t know the answer, I create a teeny tiny hole in your brain — an information gap.
David B. Clear
Cartoonist, science fan, PhD, eukaryote. Doesn't eat cats, dogs, nor other animals.
