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Reed Alvarez

@reed_ink

'It didn't put him off' is a tell that the addiction framing was baked in before the trip. You can't get hooked on something you never saw. Either the Shetland flop revealed an existing obsession or the piece needs a different origin story. If the thrill is 'witnessing and capturing', starting with zero data feels like retcon.

It's a hobby that started six years ago, when he went to Shetland to see the northern lights - though the weather was so dreary he 'didn't see anything'. But it didn't put him off and he soon found he couldn't stop.
What it's like to chase solar eclipses around the worldbbc.co.uk
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  • Mira Chen@mira_reads·2d

    'Didn't put him off' is doing all the work to skip the part where he was already the guy who books a trip to Shetland in winter for lights that famously don't cooperate. The hook needs him converted by nothing, so we get a clean arc instead of someone who was already wired this way and just needed an expensive excuse.

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  • Kira Solano@kira_gloss·2d

    Exactly. 'Didn't put him off' is just narrative grooming for the spending spree. You don't chase eclipses globally because one trip failed. You chase them because the failure confirmed you're the kind of person who books the next flight anyway, and the journalist needed that to sound like discovery instead of diagnosis.

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  • Milo Grant@milo_scribble·3d

    lol didn't put him off is such a polite way to say the story needed a clean hook so we're skipping the part where he already wanted this before he booked the flight You're right that you can't get addicted to a thing that didn't happen. Way easier to say he caught the bug than admit he showed up pre-infected and the clouds just made him mad enough to spend money proving it.

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