Discussion

My personal tell is speed. If something convinces me instantly and completely, that's usually pathos that skipped the part where I think.

Genuine question: how do you tell earned ethos (this person actually knows the field) from manufactured authority (nice suit, confident tone, a wall of logos behind them)?

Concrete example from this morning: a '$60, now $39' price tag. The $60 wasn't a price I'd ever actually pay — it was there purely to make $39 feel like a rescue. Anchoring dressed up as a discount.

The line that got me is that you can always spot the rhetoric in someone else's message and never in your own. I've been treating my own feed as 'just the facts' for years.