The problems with going viral
and what are we doing here anyway?
Greetings!
Going viral seems to be the flavour of the month at the moment (unless I’ve just missed it until now). For example,
held a webinar about how to make posts go viral, which I haven’t watched because I’m not a paying subscriber to her newsletter. Carissa at followed up on this in her article If this is how to go viral on Substack, count me out (which, rather ironically, seems to have gone viral if the number of comments is anything to go by). At a bit of a tangent, but related I think, is the article by about why he is not going paid on Substack, which has so far garnered over 300 comments.(I’m detecting a trend here: write about something you’re not going to do, or that you’re not doing, and watch the likes and comments roll in. For example, my post about why I didn’t like the idea of Substack badges attracted 50 comments at a time when my only subscribers were myself, my wife and our three cats plus a few other nice people, while
’s short (written, obviously) essay about not being able to write has received over 40 comments overnight! But I digress.)Look, I’ll be honest with you. Just like many people I love the dopamine hit of seeing another “like” or another “comment”, and I feel despondent when I’ve spent ages on an article and all there is show for it afterwards is a massive nothingness. Even so, the idea of attempting to make a post go viral is not really how I want to spend my time and energy, for the following reasons.
Is it worth it?
A few years ago I was reading about someone whose blog post was picked up by Stephen Fry (who writes
on Substack by the way) who tweeted a link to it. Fry had, I believe, a couple of million followers on Twitter (as it was called then). The result was that so many thousands of people visited the blog post the site’s server crashed. And what was the result of this huge flurry of activity? Eight new subscribers to the blogger’s newsletter. Admittedly, eight is better than none, but if his intention had been to write a viral post, would it have been worth the effort?Perhaps it’s different on Substack, because it’s a community of readers and writers. Perhaps that makes it more likely that someone will subscribe when they read a post, I don’t know.
Even so, I’m more interested in writing in a consistently engaging way. Even if I could write posts in way that is more likely to cause them to go viral, I find the prospect of trying to quite exhausting. After all, if you’re going to be serious about it, you have to think about the title of the post, search engine optimisation, what Google’s algorithm is looking for this month and more than likely several other things that I don’t even know about. All I want to do is write.
I don’t want to write like that
Over the years I’ve read a lot about what makes a post go viral. There are the kind of examples that apparently Sarah showcased, the ones that set up something and oppose it.
Another option (not mutually exclusive) is to write listicles, that is list articles. Even here, there is a science to it. I haven’t kept up with this because, frankly, I can’t be bothered, but in the past I’ve read that a title with an odd number fares better than one with an even number. For example, in theory my article 11 Charactersitics of good writers will have done better than an article entitled “10 Characteristics etc”. I say in theory because I wrote it only two weeks ago and until today it was behind a paywall, and so went to just a small number of people.
It gets better (or worse). Apparently people respond more to the prospect of loss in some form than to positive ones. Thus I “should” have called that article “11 reasons that your writing sucks”.
Well, OK, but do I really want to write like that?
I know I have aspirations above my station, but did Borges write articles with titles like that? Did Calvino? Did David Foster Wallace?
Leaving a legacy
And that leads me on to my penultimate point. My writing has been influenced by someone called Paul Jennings, who was writing when I was at school. I don’t think I’d be impressed if all he had left behind was articles like “11 reasons your writing sucks”. Such is my love of writing, and being as good as I can be at it, that I’d like to think that maybe I too will leave a legacy of good prose. I might not be here to see it, but I don’t think that’s the point.
What IS the point?
For me, the point of writing here is to enjoy the writing for its own sake rather than as an algorithm: if I do X then maybe hundreds or even thousands of people will read it and share it. With a bit of luck, other people will continue to enjoy reading what I write. In short, I want to write about what enthralls me, intrigues me, uplifts me or makes me laugh.
And that is the reason I’m here.
Agree, it’s too much pressure to have the end result in mind. The Bhagavad Geeta has a great verse on not thinking about the end result but just focusing on the action (below). Truly, thinking about statistics and subs and numbers leads me to inaction and being anti creative;)
कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन।
Karmanye vadhikaraste Ma Phaleshu Kadachana
mā karma-phala-hetur bhūr mā te saṅgo ’stvakarmaṇi
Literally translated, it means:
Your right is only to work, but never to its fruits
Let the fruit of action be not your motive, nor let your attachment be to inaction
I agree with you. Even sometimes I think writing my stuff is helpfull in some way, for others. My cats strangely enjoy when I read aloud.