[ClosedPistachio]

Nitpick - the point of parentheses, as used in the article title, are to add optional extra context without being required to make the sentence complete. The sentence "Reflections on 1 year of become successful on YouTube" isn't complete. Either remove the parentheses (thus making those words part of the title), or consider a different sentence structure.

[adamesque]

I love this nongrammatical/idiomatic use of parentheses actually. Language is a tool, and its rules can be just as powerful when violated as when upheld.

In this case they convey a subtext you can’t get as gracefully by being a slave to syntax— that the author hoped the post would be about how they did achieve success, but that didn’t happen, forcing the parenthetical qualifier. I don’t think another treatment would express that quite as well; you can almost feel the wince.

[laborcontract]

you’d normally use square braces [for this kind of thing]

[sdwr]

Square braces are used to show you are editing a quote for grammar or brevity, not to change the meaning of your own sentence. Ex:

> I love this [...] use of parentheses. [Rules] can be just as powerful when violated as when upheld.

[laborcontract]

you can also use it in place of commas.

[potsandpans]

Nitpick to your nitpick:

You've offered a linguistically prescriptive interpretation that ignores nuance and flexibility of language.

While it may be the case that the canonical "point" of parenthesis is what you've described, the purpose only remains for as long as we culturally accept that definition.

The usage of parenthesis as an aside to indicate a certain emotion somewhat playfully is not only acceptable, it's entered into the cultural zeitgeist. We all understand the meaning. The sentence is complete -- regardless of the rules you've cited -- because the reader doesn't eliminate the parenthesis from their context like a robot, and we have a common understanding of what the aside is trying to communicate.

[ChaseRensberger]

I appreciate the nitpick. I am certainly not the strongest writer but hope to write more articles in the future. Thank you for the feedback.

[szundi]

Probably become=>becoming whould help

[thundergolfer]

"Reflections on 1 Year of (Trying to) Becoming Successful" isn't correct either.

[blakehawkins]

People write like they read and speak, which is where this mistake comes from

The right way is to replace the parentheses with a pair of dashes, one before and one after the deemphasized clause

[lisper]

Or just remove the parens. They don't really add (much of) anything. (See what I did there?)

Or maybe:

"... trying (unsuccessfully) to succeed..."

[ChaseRensberger]

I think these are all really good points. I certainly need to improve at my article writing abilities. I have removed the parentheses from the title.

[ghaff]

Probably em-dash in a formatted document rather than pair of hyphens like I'd use here. I'm pretty sure there are some stylistic recommendations about parens vs. em-dashes. I probably used to overuse parens but, in spite of being on my company's style committee for almost 15 years, I'm not sure I was ever all that consistent and I'm not sure we had hard and fast rules.

[namanyayg]

OP has been "trying" for 1 year, not "becoming" for one year.