False scarcity -- an even sleazier approach

It seems my post titled "The Most Controversial SEO Tip" got deleted. That's understandable, I suppose -- it too easily gave the impression I was advocating people follow the tip, when it was actually my goal to spark discussion and hear others' thoughts.

I hope this little post on false scarcity is more aboveboard.

The saving grace of the false scarcity claims that many copywriters use is that those claims are transparent enough to be cartoonish.

Well, here's something a little different from ClickBank's vendor promotional guidelines:

Notice how "If you order in the next ten minutes, you will get ..." is perfectly acceptable, according to ClickBank. ("Order today for this amazing opportunity," while seemingly different, has the same internal logic, so we'll ignore that one.)

The sleaziness of "If you order ..." is that it exploits the general public's propensity to commit the fallacy in deductive logic known as denying the antecedent. Here's the structure of that fallacy:

If P, then Q.
Not P.
Therefore, not Q. (an invalid inference)

If you order in the next ten minutes, you will get ...
You won't order in the next ten minutes.
Therefore, you won't get ... (an invalid inference)

The inference is invalid, but it serves the copywriter's purpose and gives the copywriter plausible deniability.

The fallacy of denying the antecedent is one of a large number of cognitive biases recognized in the social sciences. These cognitive biases form a largely untapped gold mine of selling power, and unlike most of what's found in any number of NLP approaches to copywriting, what we have here is sound empirical research.

If you buy me a beer for this magnum opus of a post, I'll be your BFF. (And if you've been paying attention, you'll notice that not buying me a beer for this magnum opus of a post doesn't necessarily exclude you from being my BFF.)