What does curation actually do?

Your guess is as good as mine

I’m genuinely curious as to how this is working. My curated stories:

Image: author’s own

Image: author’s own

Image: author’s own

Versus my only non-curated story:

Image: author’s own

Either it’s better than my other writing (then why no curation?) or people are just sucked in by an especially grim headline, which is kind of disappointing for humanity as whole, really.

Thoughts?