Agreed that it is, but still not a valid reason to start throwing up junk items just to make a magic number. Undermines the validity of the entire piece.
If someone comes to you and makes a succinct 3-point argument and someone else comes to you and make those same 3 points plus 20 tangentially related, low-quality, possibly irrelevant points, who has been the more persuasive?
If you have 2 strong points and 12 weak ones, you're generally much better off making a 2 point argument than a 14 point one.
>If someone comes to you and makes a succinct 3-point argument and someone else comes to you and make those same 3 points plus 20 tangentially related, low-quality, possibly irrelevant points, who has been the more persuasive?
If I'm not superficial, either both the same (if those 20 are totally useless), or the one with the better arguments. Those "20 tangentially related, low-quality, possibly irrelevant points" could still have some point worth considering.
Everyone has limited time and (presumably) attention. You don’t go around adding paragraphs of lorem ipsum or random bytes/words to your replies. Why not? Some of that could have some point worth considering.
you think it's a good strategy to arrive at a magic number of items? if you have 9 items, stop there, instead most articles on the web will bullshit one more and do a headline 10 x ...