Subtle Art Title Origins

Mark Manson shares how he came up with the viral title "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck"

"I used to keep a list of article ideas - just a running list I would add to when something popped up in conversations. The title came from a heavy metal band Lamb of God - they had a song called 'The Subtle Art of Murder and Persuasion.'

At that time, I had just done two different articles with profanity in the title and discovered that if you put that word in the title, everything would go further. So I was adding it to a bunch of my titles.

I knew I wanted to do an article about not giving a f*ck because that was just an obvious topic. When I heard that song title, I thought 'Subtle Art Not Giving...' - that's pretty damn good."

The article went viral, and when his agent saw how well it performed, they suggested changing his in-progress book's title to match the viral article.