In 2014, two Dutch pranksters bought McNuggets and Big Macs, cut them into bite-size pieces and put them on a nice tray with toothpicks. Then they walked around an organic food expo offering samples of a “new organic alternative to fast food.” The food experts loved it. “Pure.” “Very rich.” One man said the nugget reminded him of cod. (watch it here)
You can say this exposes food experts as frauds. But the bigger takeaway is that a toothpick told people this was something of high quality and taste. That someone had taken care to make it, before they’d experienced anything.
I believe all pieces of content need a toothpick to rise above the noise. A toothpick is a costly signal that’s easy to see. It doesn’t make your work better. It makes your work visible.
Some examples:
A market commentary piece makes an argument. Put a market map on top of it and readers can see you went and looked at every company in the space. Plenty of them will skip the argument, screenshot the map and send it to their team. Some of those people come back for the argument.
Tim Urban’s Wait But Why posts are full of crude stick figures. Someone clearly sat and drew each one, so you assume the thinking got the same attention. A stock image tells you nobody bothered.
Most podcasts are two people, two mics, a bookshelf and a warm white background. Have the same conversation on a walk or in a car, and the first frame tells you someone thought about it. Seinfeld built a whole show around a car and a cup of coffee.
MrBeast doesn’t call a video “What it’s like underground.” He calls it “I Spent 50 Hours Buried Alive,” so the effort is in the title. “We spoke to 40 CFOs” does this too, if you actually did.
Anyone can shoot a video story in a village. If you lived there while you shot it, it shows in what you caught, and it’s the line people repeat when they share it: they lived there for a month.
Toothpicks also expire.
A polished launch video on X used to be one, because it meant an agency and weeks of edits. Now every seed-stage company has one and AI tools make them cheap, so the video only tells you the company launched.
When everyone has the same toothpick, you have to find a new one.
Before you publish, ask what shows the cost of making this, and whether your audience will spot it in five seconds. That’s your toothpick. Stab your content with it!