Did you remember to…

…use a bold, contrarian title that could help the piece go viral, e.g. “The Greatest Threat to America Is the Mindfulness Movement!”?

…open by revealing how you abstained from a common activity (text messaging, drinking beer, telling lies) for a short period (a month, six days, fifteen minutes)?

…explain how this experience shook you to the core and changed your view of society?

…pivot to calling out millennials for their numerous moral failings (ignorance, vanity, addiction to avocado toast)?

…argue that we also cannot overlook the menace of X (helicopter parents, FOMO, hookup culture, gluten-free diets)?

…point out, as an aside, three things that everyone gets wrong about group Y (introverts, narcissists, child prodigies, sugar daddies, whippet addicts)?

…show why democracies elect terrible leaders with a single pie chart?

…raise the specter of a community whose ways are alien to you — e.g. rural Oklahoma voters — and describe them as though they are hobbits from Middle Earth?

…slip in a random Alexis de Tocqueville quotation?

…insert the phrase, “As it turns out,” to tell your reader that some real counterintuitive gotcha type shit is going down right now?

…diagnose our malaise by observing that, compared to nationality X (Brazilians, The Dutch, The Japanese), Americans just don’t do Y (naps, maternity leave, kinky sex, brunch) right at all?

…slow down, momentarily, to let your reader scream, “Mind! Blown!”

…describe the looming moral challenge of tech thing X (self-driving cars, machine learning AI, “The Dark Web”)?

…declare that these technologies pose a dire threat to precious thing Y (mom and pop businesses, Alzheimer’s patients, Syrian refugees)?

…drop your bombshell: “I’m all in favor of the internet, but this is going too far!”

…throw in a harrowing digression about cyber-bullying?

…proclaim that we can end bad internet thing X (online hate mobs, Nigerian prince scams, website porn addiction) with a simple return to retro thing Y (candlelight dinners, ballroom dancing, free-range animal husbandry)?

…tell your reader, now teetering on the edge of a knowledge orgasm, that we should seriously consider your simplistic proposal for increasing all human happiness?

…offer “two quick hacks” to end factory farming?

…light the path to colonizing Mars?

…comfort the downtrodden?

…feed the hungry?

…smash bigotry?

…halt poverty?

…cure cancer?

…end war?

…ascend to the summit of Mount Olympus?

…dethrone Apollo, God Of Wisdom?

…dip your toes in the fountain of youth?

…laugh at mortality?

…scorn fate?

…stop time?

…square the circle?

…become the negation?

…replay the universe from the moment of conception?

…reconstruct the Library of Alexandria in your mind’s eye?

…pause to allow your reader to literally climax, her mind reeling, her body spent, her soul jagged and trembling from seeing the joints of reality laid bare before her eyes?

…pat your back?

…pump your fist?

…hit “publish”?

…share on Facebook?