Why you should write trash

“I’d rather have a hot dog than caviar.”

– Juan Pablo Montoya

Whenever I tell people that I want to be a writer I always have to pretend like I want to write something profound and deep.

I don’t.

I want to be the guy who makes those eBooks that are always advertised on the sidebars of porn sites. Books with titles like 10 tips to get a bigger wiener.

I want to be one of those authors because their books sell.

My favorite author is Stefan Zweig, a guy most modern Americans have probably never heard of. If you handed the average man a copy of The Royal Game they’d never read it. Yet that same guy would probably devour a shoddy PDF book titled something like How to bang waitresses.

The reason that I mention this is because yesterday I didn’t have to go to work. Since there’s nothing fun to do on a Tuesday anyway, I decided to write my very own trashy eBook. I wrote the whole thing in six solid hours, put a silly pen name on it, sent off for a cover, and set up a website. I have a sinking suspicion that my endeavor will pay for itself in no time.

Whether you’d like to admit it or not trash is what sells. The History Channel has devolved into alien conspiracies and rednecks because actually learning something wouldn’t be “fun.”

On this site I write posts about making money, learning to program, and meditation; yet all my search hits derive from items such as “rape” and “used panties.”

The Internet, one of humanities all time greatest achievements, has potential to be used for limitless purposes. All it has is porn and cat pictures. “Lesbian Latinas 7” and “Erwin The Singing Cat” are why we don’t have a cure for cancer or solution to world hunger. All our great minds were too preoccupied with making sure that some yokels in Montana could discreetly watch strangers have sex.

I’m sure it sounds like I’m being bitter and misanthropic, but I’m not. People are people, they’ve been the same way forever. You might as well profit off them. Tim Ferriss became a best selling author by appealing to the average person’s natural laziness. Tucker Max became a household name by catering to America’s love of sex and drinking. Naked Came the Stranger was a literary hoax meant to showcase how lowbrow our culture is… and it became a bestseller.

If anything, there’s a great lesson to be learned from all this: write trash, it will make you rich.