[Bizarro]

I've been skirting around the idea of practicing mindfulness, but there's something that bothers me about aeon and "magazines" like it.

The articles always seem to try to be "contrarian" or "unique" for the sake of being different - "I've got something to tell you that you don't know and you haven't thought about".

I get that it's pretty much the point of aeon, but at some point it just gets annoying. It's almost like any kind of insight into something is way down the totem pole, below some kind of "shock, contrarian, unique" factor.

[Spearchucker]

Exactly. Make the reader spend effort on attaining insight into the point and the reader becomes more invested in the product. Classic Cialdini.