How To Write BOTB-Worthy Threads

[enchanted_elixir]

How To Write BOTB-Worthy Threads
by @enchanted_elixir ​

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Explaining The Rubric In Detail & Tips on How To Qualify
• Outline and Clarity
• Formatting
• Writing and Research
• Citations
• Writing Tools

Spoiler: Introduction

Introduction


When it comes to writing good informational threads, there are six criteria you need to satisfy.

• Reactions:
  • The thread must receive at least 20 positive reactions from the community.
• Relevance:
  • The thread must be about looksmaxing, blackpill, or self-improvement.
  • It should either be educational and/or instructional.
  • The thread demonstrates what it promises.
  • The thread should be the best thread on that topic, and not inferior to what is already in the best of the best.
  • The information in it also shouldn't be mostly or entirely water (common sense) to normies.
• Effort:
  • The thread must demonstrate a high level of effort and thoughtfulness. 500 words minimum.
• Evidence and Quality:
  • The thread should comprehensively explain the topic it promises to discuss.
  • The author must demonstrate a good (preferably deep) understanding of what is being discussed. Threads that demonstrate a shallow understanding or no understanding will not be added to BOTB.
  • The thread should be as truthful as possible on objective topics, or backed by great reasoning and consensus on subjective subjects.
• Presentation:
  • The thread must be titled properly. Poorly titled threads like "skin guide BOTB" will not qualify.
  • The thread must be written properly. Frequent grammar, spelling, punctuation mistakes, among others, will not qualify.
  • The thread must be coherent, structured (having chapters, sections or table of contents) and formatted properly.
  • If relevant, the thread must explain what the topic is about and why it is important. Unless it's super obvious.
  • The thread must be clear, lucid, and easy to understand for the average person. Terms that are not commonly known must be explained simply and comprehensively.
• Originality:
  • The majority of the text must be written by the author. Threads written mostly or entirely generated by A.I. language models, mostly comprised of copypasta, information from external sources, or other's writing won't be added to BOTB.

The focus on this guide is to teach you how to write threads that are BOTB-worthy. I am going to show everyone how I write my threads, and some general thread-writing advice.

Spoiler: Explaining The Rubric In Detail & Tips on How To Qualify

Spoiler: Reactions

Reactions:

• The thread must receive at least 20 positive reactions from the community.

This is very straightforward. Your thread needs to get 20+ positive reacts.

Spoiler: Relevance

Relevance:

• The thread must be about looksmaxing, blackpill, or self-improvement.

Pretty self-explanatory. Topics that don't help people looksmax, understand the blackpill, or self-improve don't count.

• It should either be educational and/or instructional.

The thread should teach people something and/or show them how to do something.

• The thread demonstrates what it promises.

If your title is "Megadictionary of Phytonutrients for Looksmaxing", please talk about that. If the thread is 95% about how fantastic plants are, or the thread doesn't really fulfill the promise of showing a "Megadictionary of Phytonutrients for Looksmaxing", it would violate this rule.

• The thread should be the best thread on that topic, and not inferior to what is already in the best of the best. If there's already another fashion thread, for example in the BOTB section that is superior to your fashion thread, your thread isn't eligible.

If there is a thread already in the BOTB section on the topic you'll discuss, then the thread you will write must be better.

• The information in it also shouldn't be mostly or entirely water (aka common sense) to most of the target audience. This would basically mean that if the thread contains information that most non-blackpilled normies would know, it wouldn't qualify. Example: A thread solely dedicated to "Why acne destroys your looks" would violate this one.

A thread that mostly or entirely states very obvious things that normies know will not be added, like "Why Acne is a Looksmin", even if it's obvious to users, it still qualifies, as long as it isn't obvious to normies, because remember, we have much more lurkers than users. But if it's obvious to normies, it doesn't qualify.

Spoiler: Effort

Effort:

• The thread must demonstrate a high level of effort, and thoughtfulness. 500 words minimum.

Very easy. Threads that appear high-effort only. No moderate-effort or low effort threads.

Spoiler: Evidence and Quality

Evidence and Quality:

• The thread should comprehensively explain the topic it promises to discuss.

The thread shouldn't demonstrate threads that are empty, narrow, limited, and shallow when it comes to information. If you're going to make a skin guide, explain everything you know and can find online about skin. If you're talking about a more narrow subject, like How to turn straight hair curly, explain everything you know about how to turn straight hair curly! People want information-rich threads, especially when it comes to understanding the topic and solutions (if applicable) to the topic.

• The author must demonstrate a good (preferably deep) understanding of what is being discussed. Threads that demonstrate a shallow understanding or no understanding will not be added to BOTB.

This is the most important one. Especially when it comes to things that are science-based.
Get the facts right. Know what you're talking about. Demonstrate your understanding. Threads explaining things that the author doesn't know about can't be added to BOTB due to possible misinformation or the lack of crucial information. Please, always do as much research as possible and learn as much about the topic as possible. You'd be amazed at how much you don't know. Trust me. I removed almost all of my own BOTB threads in November 2023 for a reason, this reason specifically.

Example: Someone makes a guide on how to grow taller, and they know nothing about how HGH converts to IGF-1 in the liver and the whole thread assumes more HGH = more growth, not knowing that things like protein, minerals aromatase inhibitors, and vitamins also are important. This person's thread can't go to BOTB.

• The thread should be as truthful as possible on objective topics, or backed by great reasoning and consensus on subjective subjects.

When it comes to using scientific evidence. If you took information from a scientific source of information, like a research paper, scientific article, etc. to write your thread, it's vital that you cite your sources. At the absolute minimum, show the link of the source you got your information from. Pasting the link on the thread or on the bottom of the thread in its own section is good. Citations are preferred.

Outside of that, if the thread is on things that are objective, like ways to grow taller, the information on the thread should be as truthful as possible. Threads that have misinformation on objective topics or that don't have good reasoning on topics that might be subjective (like opinions and theories) won't qualify.

You don't have to cite evidence or anything if the topic is susceptible to subjectivity. Fashion is a good example, since fashion is susceptible to subjectivity. Anything that is susceptible to subjectivity will be assessed based on the thread's reasoning and consensus among users and moderators. If you're making a thread recommending people to wear dresses, the reasoning is bad (why would a straight male wear a dress as a looksmax?), and it won't gain consensus, therefore, it won't qualify.

When it comes to conjectural threads (A conjecture is a statement that is believed to be true, but has not yet been proven. Conjectures are based on intuition, observation, or experience, but lack formal proof and are based on incomplete information). The reasoning for the conjecture has to be solid.

For example, if you hypothesize or theorize something is likely to be true, like maybe you think a certain supplement can do something nobody (not even in the scientific community) has thought about in terms of looksmaxing, display good reasoning for it.

Opinions and theories. are touchy, since they can actually be good ones. If it's opinion-based or a theory, please add as many sources, pieces of evidence, or as much solid reasoning to back it up, to avoid the thread look like pure opinion or an uncredible theory or a hypothesis. With opinions and theories, consensus and great reasoning is the key to qualifying, so be extremely persuasive.

Spoiler: Presentation

Presentation:

• The thread must be titled properly. Poorly titled threads like "skin guide BOTB" will not qualify.

Example Topic: Health, and how it relates to Looksmaxing
Good Title: "Ultimate Health Guide: How To Maximize Your Health & Why Health is ESSENTIAL For Looksmaxing"
Bad Title: "health guide (high effort everyone GTFIH NOW)"

• The thread must be written properly. Frequent grammar, spelling, punctuation mistakes, among others, will not qualify.

If the thread shows that the user can't spell, doesn't understand proper grammar, doesn't know how to punctuate, etc. It can't qualify.

• The thread must be coherent, structured (having chapters, sections or table of contents) and formatted properly.

Threads that are hard to read, are incoherent, look like run-on sentences, or are poorly formatted or any other major structuring or formatting flaws will not qualify. People don't want to read threads that are hard to read or ugly.

• If relevant, the thread must explain what the topic is about and why it is important. Unless it's super obvious, like getting rid of acne, explaining to people why it's important is necessary.

Easy to explain. If necessary, the thread must explain to the reader what the topic is and why it's important. Unless it's super obvious.

• The thread must be clear, lucid, and easy to understand for the average person. Terms that are not commonly known must be explained simply and comprehensively.

Incomprehensible threads that sound like Shakespeare wrote a PhD paper on the relationship between looksmaxing, quantum superchemistry and teleology will not be added to BOTB, since nobody will understand it and few will put in the effort to understand it, making the thread useless even if the information in it is great.

Spoiler: Originality

Originality:

• The majority of the text must be written by the author. Threads written mostly or entirely generated by A.I. language models, mostly comprised of copypasta, information from external sources, or other's writing won't be added to BOTB.

This is because we value originality, effort and expertise. Generating threads with language models doesn't really demonstrate that the user actually is knowledgeable in a subject. Language models may either not be experts on these subjects, or the user may be a poor prompt engineer, causing these language models to give shallow level information on the topic, and can possibly give misinformation, hard to understand explanations, too simple and incomprehensive explanations, or demonstrate a bad understanding of the topic or audience. People who use these tools to write their threads may not realize this since they don't know better, therefore hindering the quality of the thread. As with threads that are mostly copypasta/information from external sources, this can't qualify since that user didn't actually write a majority of the thread, therefore, it isn't original. Again, we want the author to know what they're talking about and an author that is using mostly external, non-original information is less likely to know what they are talking about.

Tips on How To Write BOTB-Worthy Threads

Spoiler: Outline & Clarity

Outline & Clarity
When I was reading my anti-aging guide a few months back, I was literally reading it looking like this...

It was so bad. I know much more about anti-aging now so looking at my rookie guide, I cringed. I couldn't take it.
This is the same thing that happened to my heightmaxing guide, which is why I make recreates, or "revamps".

When one intends on making a BOTB-worthy thread, I recommend you to consider each of these.

• Goal: "What is the goal of this thread? What am I trying to teach? What do I want the reader to know, to understand?"
  • This helps you to stay laser focused on why you're writing the threads, and not rambling onto other irrelevant topics.
• Avatar: "Who is going to read this? What do they know? What don't they know? What can I do to bridge the understanding gap between they understand and don't understand"
  • This is very important! Not knowing who will read this will result in low ratings, confusion, and poor results. Are you writing for complete looksmax newbies, lurkers, looksmax users, looksmax experts?
  • Knowing who you're writing to will help you to resonate with your audience, giving them perfect understanding of what you're saying. You know what makes them tick, you know what makes them laugh, you know what gets their attention, you know what makes them want to like and comment on your threads, you know what gets them to read, you know what words, studies and content to use to explain your points. Do they seek understanding of the topic, do they seek solutions, do they seek both? This all leads to stellar results on your threads. You can even have your thread go viral on the forum!
  • For my anti-aging guide, my audience is for looksmax users, lurkers (knowledgeable and average) and experts who want to understand and implement anti-aging solutions into their routine currently or down the line when they can afford it.
• Outline: Break the topic you're discussing up into properly divided parts, this can be used as a Table of Contents. Here's the draft outline I wrote for my possibly upcoming recreated anti-aging guide.
• Clarity: How can I make this as clear as possible? As easy as possible? As lucid as possible?

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Overview of Anti-Aging
• Physical and Biological Anti-Aging (Understanding & Solutions)
  • Stem Cell Exhaustion, Cell Loss, & Cellular Atrophy
  • Free Radicals & Oxidation
  • Mitochondria Dysfunction
  • Senescent Cells (Zombie Cells)
  • DNA and Epigenetic Damage
  • Telomeres
  • Proteostasis
  • Intracellular Waste Products
  • Extracellular Waste Products
  • Altered Intracellular Communication
  • Other Anti-Aging Practices, Tools, Health Optimizations, Supplements, and Peptides To Implement
• Appearance Anti-Aging (Understanding & Solutions)
  • Overview
  • Skin
  • Hair
  • Bones
• Environment & Habit Based Anti-Aging (Understanding & Solutions)
  • Overview
  • Habit Changes You Can Do To Minimize and Reduce Aging Speed
  • Things You Can Do To Optimize Your Environment To Reduce Aging Speed
• Cognitive & Mental Anti-Aging (Understanding & Solutions)
  • Overview
  • Practices
  • Supplements & Peptides
• Works Cited

Spoiler: Formatting

Formatting

The forum's weakness. This is not as hard as people think.
Structure your threads in such a way that it's nice to look at and easy to read. Here is my formatting advice. Please keep in mind that I recommend developing your own formatting style, one so people can recognize that this is a guide made by you and secondly, that you can exercise your own creative muscles. Ultimately, it's up to you.

Here is the panel bar you'll encounter when editing:

From left to right.

• The eraser is to remove formatting from highlighted code
• The "B" is to make text bold. You can highlight text and press the "B" button above or (CTRL or Command + B) to bolden text.
• The "I" is to make things italicized. You can highlight things and press the "I" button above or (CTRL or Command + I) to italicize text.
• The "TT" button is to change the size of text. For example, as you can see, the text here has many different sizes
• The palette sign, the
  
  symbol changes the color of text.
• The three dots unlock the fonts, strikethrough, underline and def inline_code(): features.
• The bullet point button allows users to use
  1. Bullet points
     • For example
  2. Number points
     1. For example
  3. And indents and outdents (if you want to go in, or out with your points)
• Alignment allows one to align their text
• To the left
• Centered
• To the right
• And finally, justified alignment.

• Links allow you to highlight text and allow someone to be redirected on a link when they click on it -> Click on me!
• Insert image allows you to upload an image from your device, or import by image URL address.
• Smiles are basically looksmax emojis, like this:
• GIFs, straightforward.
  
• Import media allows you to link and embed YouTube videos on your posts, you can just paste the video link and you'll also be fine.

• With quotes, you can do this.

• Also, in the second dropdown menu "the : (3) dots". There are
• Demonstration of Tables

Redpill	Blackpill
Focuses on game, money, confidence, masculine behavior, and status	Focuses on appearance and other sensory factors, like smell, voice, etc.
Growth Rate: High	Growth Rate: Insane

• There are also horizontal lines, which can serve as dividers

---

Spoiler: AND SPOILERS (click on this!)

Use them if your guide is long or you want to make yours easier to read. People are discouraged when they find out they have to read huge wall of text, so they won't read. Making it into bite sized chunks encourages reading and that's what we want!

• def if_programmer(user, this_feature_is_relevant = None):
      if user.wants_to_discuss_programming() = True:
          this_feature_is_relevant = True
      else:
          this_feature_is_relevant = False

---

• Titles should be on the top, in 26pt size and centered. Bold is recommended
• Feel free to add a photo somewhere on the top if you wish, or your signature (ex. by @enchanted_elixir), they should be unbolded, and 15pt.

An example:

A Novel Surgery to Open Closed Growth Plates
by @enchanted_elixir

---

• Table of Contents should be somewhere near the top, in 22pt size. Bold is also recommended.
• Under the text, make an unordered (bullet) list. The text should be in 15 or 18pt font and I recommend that it isn't bold.

An example:
Table Of Contents

• Peptide Name
• Invention Date: January 18th, 2032, and it's history
• Conclusion

---

• Chapters should be in 18 or 22 point font, and should be in bold (very recommended)
• Text should be regular and in 15 point font.

An example:

Peptide Name
The name for this peptide is (xyz). Scientists never knew the body could reverse growth plate...

Tip: Adding photos can be a great way to make a guide look more visually appealing.

Spoiler: Writing and Research

When it comes to writing, first, it's good to have an outline to know what you'll be writing about in each section. It's even better to ask yourself "What's the goal of this section? Is it to explain the section's title? To explain and give solutions? To teach?" etc. This way, everything is very clear and your mind knows exactly what to do, write, and say.

Secondly, consider the following factors in your writing.

• Word choice, what words will you choose to write your sentences with? Each word changes the sentence in a unique way, so make sure you choose the optimal words.
• Sentence structure, how should you sort the sentences? What's the optimal way to sort the sentences for maximum clarity and understanding?
• It needs to be as factual as possible and make sense.
• It needs to be clear, coherent, lucid and easy to understand.
• and more... but essentially, try to make every sentence in the guide as perfect as possible in every way (and the guide in general).

Remember, getting in BOTB will make your threads gain tens of thousands of views and influence the minds of users and future users, make you more popular and will change people's lives. Putting an insane amount of effort and making the guide as perfect as possible is very worth it.

www.grammarly.com

Consider using Grammarly when writing to make sure grammar, spelling, punctuation, clarity, etc. are perfect. You can either write the thread on there and paste it here or have it in your browser so you can automatically get error-detections. Going on the website is better though.

As with research, Google Scholar, PubMed, Mendeley, ResearchGate, GPT (verify important information online), YouTube (depends on the creator's content) and others can be good sources of information for research.

Some more WONDERFUL TOOLS for research:

Spoiler: Great Tools

AI for Research | Scite

Researchers around the world use Scite to better understand research, uncover debates, ensure they are citing reliable studies, and improve their writing.

scite.ai

Consensus AI-powered Academic Search Engine

Consensus is a new breed of academic search engine, powered by AI, grounded in science. Find the best papers while getting instant insights and topic synthesis.

consensus.app

Elicit: The AI Research Assistant

Use AI to search, summarize, extract data from, and chat with over 125 million papers. Used by over 2 million researchers in academia and industry.

elicit.com

ResearchRabbit

The most powerful discovery app ever built for researchers 🔥

www.researchrabbit.ai

https://www.scholarcy.com/

Semantic Scholar | AI-Powered Research Tool

Semantic Scholar uses groundbreaking AI and engineering to understand the semantics of scientific literature to help Scholars discover relevant research.

www.semanticscholar.org

You MUST understand what you're talking about deeply. We do not want shallow understanding. It's called BOTB for a reason. They're supposed to be the best thread on that subject in forum history (until someone dethrones your thread, if ever).

The thread must be information and advice-dense, it should have a lot of relevant information and advice on the topic it is discussing.

From here, I'll suggest that you search up the following.

• how to write clearly
• how to write a brilliant essay
• how to understand your target audience as an author
• how to write a brilliant research paper
• how to write a brilliant article
• how to write brilliantly
• ...and related queries.

You're responsible for the actions people's kids make with their bodies (most specifically talking about guides on supplements, peptides, steroids, etc.). You'll also be the one responsible for helping someone ascend and/or fixing their lives. Do your best!

Spoiler: Citations

This is relevant if you are using the scientific research of other people for your guides.

Citations, either in-text citations or footer citations. Makes your thread look much more trustworthy and avoids plagiarism (when you basically steal someone's research, due to copypasting their work and not giving credit)

Citations are used when you seek research for a point. For example, if you know that licorice can increase dopamine, you don't have to cite anything, but if you had to search it up because you didn't know beforehand and you want to add that new info in your thread, it's good to cite it in some way, whether that be a YouTube video, article, scientific paper, etc.

In-text citations would be useful if you took a quote in a scientific study and want to credit the owners for that. In my most recent guide, I made an in-text citation that looked like this.

I took a quote from the study and gave credit to the researchers through the (Dhingra & Sharma, 2006) in-text citation.
Footer citations, on the other hand, is if you read a scientific study, article, etc. during the making of your guide and you paraphrased or infused what you learned into the guide, but since you didn't take anything directly, like a direct quote, you will just cite it on the bottom.

Example:

You can either cite it through PubMed's citation button. If you're citing from a scientific website that isn't PubMed, there should still be a citation button somewhere. You can also use a citation website online to make one for you.

You can use whatever citation format you want on this site, but APA is what's usually used when citing natural sciences studies.
Or you can have ChatGPT make a footer citation for you (APA), just copy paste the study in it and ask for a citation.

If you need help on citations, please ask GPT about both in-text and footer citations, how to do them and when to use them.

Spoiler: Writing Tools

Writing Tools

• Grammarly: You can type in your drafts in Grammarly to sort all kinds of issues there. Grammatical, clarity, punctuation and other kinds of linguistic errors.
• ChatGPT/GPT-4: You can use these tools to edit and refine your paragraphs. You can also copy paste the rubric and this guide into it and then copy paste your guide or sections of the guide and assess if it meets the criteria. Please paraphrase anything GPT has wrote. Don't just copy and paste things in there. This increases the likelihood of a rejection.
• Your Brain: I don't recommend being lazy, spew everything you know, put in as much effort as you can until there's nothing left to improve that you can think of.

 

[Xangsane]

 

[futureashtray]

View attachment 2479915

you did it wrong, ur supposed to show the gif not a picture.

uhhh you cant do anything right cant you. (please take you meds you need them, your family is worried)

 

[Deleted member 22924]

Dnrd but make a main character of the month award

 

[Deleted member 43403]

Inb4 BOTB.

 

[Deleted member 4397]

 

[ReadBooksEveryday]

@apemaxxed 'As a senior contributor with over 50 BOTB guides'

 

[enchanted_elixir]

Done!

 

[Freakbob]

Put all my threads in BOTB they meet the requirements

 

[enchanted_elixir]

Put all my threads in BOTB they meet the requirements

 

[enchanted_elixir]

View attachment 2479939

These guys got Bryan Johnson on there

 

[enchanted_elixir]

Inb4 BOTB.

This isn't BOTB, this is a guide that belongs in the Info/News/Announcement Section

 

[Deleted member 43403]

This isn't BOTB, this is a guide that belongs in the Info/News/Announcement Section

It was a joke jfl also read pm

 

[enchanted_elixir]

It was a joke jfl also read pm

I will, I just got to respond to replies first.

 

[Deleted member 43403]

I will, I just got to respond to replies first.

I'm going to touch the grass then, If you wonder why I didn't saw your reply to pm.