Going Viral Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up to Be
Chasing numbers hasn’t ever paid off for me — but following my passion has.
Chasing numbers hasn’t ever paid off for me — but following my passion has.
I have been Very Online for a very long time, and that’s come with a fair share of social media “successes” and a boatload of failures.
In the 1990s, I was a popular user on AOL’s Antagonist Games Network. Though I was in elementary school at the time, I was given a dedicated spot in the platform’s weekly caption contest and had a handful of fans and imitators. In my teen years, I blogged on Myspace and Livejournal and developed a modest audience, though none of my writing there every really took off. In the early 2010’s, I became a power-user on Tumblr, helping run their curated #prose tag, and having a lot of my own writing featured.
Several memes I created on Tumblr went viral and spread widely off the platform during this period. One was a controversial meme ranking breakfast cereals, which nobody agreed with and everybody found outrageous, which garnered it a loud response. The other meme that got a lot of traction was about shifting my identity from bisexual to gay (and back again) — it offended both bisexual and gay people, because they mistook a description of my own personal experience as a prescription for how others ought to identify and feel. I also unwittingly ignited a lot of heated discourse on Tumblr about a whether it was problematic for a lesbian to be attracted to male comedian and musician Neil Cicierega.
From these experiences, I observed that the best way to get a lot of attention online is to provoke strong emotions, particularly intense disagreement or outrage. If people can’t help but loudly, vociferously respond to your take, you’re going to get a lot of responses. That type of attention tends to be useless at best, and downright terrifying at worst, though. I never even got any free cereal out of the ordeal.
When Tumblr began to die, I moved to Medium, where my essays about trigger warnings, net neutrality, and the Aziz Ansari accusations generated pretty intense reactions. In each of those essays, I wrote candidly about current events that struck a personal chord with me. Those pieces earned me thousands of reads, a few TV and radio appearances, and a boatload of hate mail — particularly the two that touched on sexual assault. I also received a lot of grateful messages from survivors, though some of those were too intense for me to process. From this, I learned that my best writing is both timely and timeless, at once personal and generalizable to a wider problem or experience.
Not long after, in March of 2018, I posted the essay Laziness Does Not Exist. It went far more viral than anything else I have ever made before or since. It was a lengthy, reflective essay about the struggles of my students, and how traumatized many of them are by the routine assumption that they aren’t trying their best. I was inspired to write the essay based on my own experiences working at an Evangelical Christian College where students were frequently looked down on by their other professors.
Laziness really connect with people. I still get emails about it. As of today, it has garnered over 3.1 million reads. It has been shared far and wide, translated into several languages, and its success directly led to me getting a literary agent and a book deal with Simon & Schuster. From this experience, I learned that I have the power to say things that matter — and that I should use my persuasive abilities and knack for reflection to bring some good into the world, rather than for drumming up clicks.
My life is a testament to the fact that virality can occasionally pay off. Yet for every essay I’ve written or meme I’ve created that made a big splash, I’ve had hundreds of flops. And hell, most of my viral successes haven’t actually brought any good into my life. Laziness Does Not Exist got me an agent and a book deal, but all my piece on Aziz Ansari got me was an endless deluge of triggering messages from survivors, and multiple rapists confessing their sins in my inbox.
I think people tend to overestimate the impact a popular post has on the life of its creator, and underestimate the number of failures that undergird every hit. People also seem to believe that virality can be easily mastered, if you only know the exact right time to post and the right formatting or phrasing to use. In reality, forging a creative career online is far from linear, and as soon as you think you’ve unlocked the “rules,” you realize you’re just getting stagnant.
In my case, the posts that feel like the biggest disappointments aren’t the ones with low numbers. I write about niche topics for my own satisfaction (and to connect with a specific audience of fellow weirdos) all the time. The real flops are the posts that were done cravenly, seeking a large response rather than speaking from an authentic place. And my biggest successes aren’t always the posts that were the most broadly popular. They’re the ones that really meant something to me, emotionally and artistically, and that connected with others in a deep and lasting way. Sometimes, it takes years for a piece of writing to find the reader it was meant for. Other times, I have to keep circling the same topic dozens of times before I finally figure out how to articulate my point correctly.
After over nearly twenty years of making “content” online, I have developed a sense of what my voice is, what kind of work I enjoy creating, and how I can navigate the superficial numbers game of social media without letting it corrupt my art completely. I’ve also learned a lot of lessons the hard way, and wasted a lot of energy chasing clout. Here are the principles I keep finding myself relearning, over and over again:
People can tell the difference between authenticity and opportunism.
On Medium, there are a lot of very popular pieces about how to do numbers on Medium. Writers desperately want to learn the secret formula to success, and a cottage industry of writing about writing has popped up to meet that demand. There are essays about how long to make your titles, which words to put in your ledes, how to format your posts, and which images to use. There’s a whole series of posts dissecting why popular pieces were so appealing after the fact. On Instagram, Twitter, and Tiktok, a lot of similar content abounds, attempting to break down virality to a few core principles and algorithm hacks.
There are several problems with this approach. The primary one is how craven, soulless, and antithetical to making good art it is. Good writing cannot be easily distilled into a few search-engine-optimizing tips. Authentic creativity cannot thrive by following a few publicist-approved bullet points.
I’ve seen my essay Laziness Does Not Exist discussed in several how-to-go-viral listicles, and the advice always misses the mark so obliviously it makes me want to scream. One such piece claimed Laziness (and several other popular essays) went viral because it used the word “not” in its title. The author didn’t contemplate why a lot of popular pieces might take a critical or dialectical approach, resulting in their use of the word “not.” He didn’t probe the actual content of the pieces at all. He simply noticed that we all had a common word in our titles and left it at that.
The truth — that the essay was popular because its touches on core feelings of inadequacy that haunt many of us — is incompatible with an optimizing, content-generating view of the world. My essay did huge numbers because it was a good essay. It discussed a profound and pervasive human problem using a genuine personal narrative. It made a strong argument. Readers got a lot out of it, intellectually and emotionally. These qualities are hard to come by — you can’t force it, and you can’t recreate it by emulating someone else’s style or using a similar title as them. I find it pretty insulting that so many “content creators” on Medium think Laziness’ success was that surface level.
As Peggy Olson once said on Mad Men, “I’d never recommend imitation as a strategy. You’ll be second, which is very far from first.” Users can smell desperation. They also get bored by formulaic work. And making good art isn’t a science. It’s, well, an art. You have to represent your own distinct perspective, go against the grain, and infuse the work with your true feelings in order for it to be a creative success, if not a viral one. That won’t always resonate with everybody. And that’s a good thing, actually. Strong writing is motivated by more than pageviews and claps.
At some point, you have to learn to ignore the numbers.
Social media sites and platforms like Medium give you more data to obsess over than you could ever practically use. You can track your daily reads, claps, and shares. You can pour over metrics regarding who is following you, what they’ve commented on, and when tends to be the best time to post. You can fret every time your views take a hit, and refresh constantly when the notifications are coming in hot. But none of it will ever bring you artistic satisfaction. And no amount of clout will ever make you feel appreciated and loved. I promise.
In social psychology, we have observed this phenomenon call the overjustification effect, wherein tying a person’s work to external rewards and punishments actually saps their internal motivation. Turning a fun activity into an income source can really suck the joy out of it. So can linking a student’s learning to their grades, or rewarding a child for doing chores by giving them stickers or toys. External motivation alienates us from the pleasure we once got out of doing a task.
I think that’s what focusing on social media numbers can do to us as creative people. Instead of making art based on what we find interesting and rewarding, we chase clicks. Rather than evaluating our work on its merits, we get bogged down in other people’s fleeting reactions. No matter how well you do on social media, you will invariably have failures, offend people, be misinterpreted, and go ignored for long stretches of time. If you live and die by your daily statistics, you won’t have a good sense of who you really are as an artist, and what you really find enjoyable to make.
These days, I barely keep track of my numbers at all. I don’t pay any mind to comments on Medium or Instagram unless they come from people I already respect. There simply isn’t enough time in the day to take all that junk data in. Because my follower counts are in the double-digit thousands, I can’t keep track of small, daily changes to them — all I can tell is that the overall long-term trajectory is upward. I trust that as long as I keep doing my thing, on my terms, I’ll find the audience I’m supposed to find.
I couldn’t even tell you how well my last two pieces did. What I do know, however, is that I enjoyed writing them, and that they provoked a few really rewarding conversations with people I enjoy hearing from. That’s what matters. Everything else will sort itself out in the end.
I think people might roll their eyes when they hear me saying this. “Of course you can ignore the numbers,” they might say. “You already have a lot of followers.” This is true, but trust me, I only got to this place because I didn’t fixate on the numbers too much in the first place. I’ve always written whatever I felt like writing, and for the first fifteen years, that didn’t really bring me a large audience.
It took a decade and a half of writing online before I stumbled into a significant following. I really don’t believe my career would have gone better if I’d spent all that time vying for clicks. I needed to hone my voice and stay true to myself to get where I am. Fifteen year old me blogged in obscurity on Myspace so that thirty year old me could create Laziness Does Not Exist. When I keep myself from looking at the metrics, I feel more satisfied with my writing, and more inspired to explore and experiment.
A high follower count doesn’t necessarily translate to engagement, sales, or any other benefits.
This year, I’ve had to use my social media platforms to market my book. I’ve tried to go about the loathsome task of self-promotion in as genuine a way as possible. In the past year I’ve gone from three thousand Instagram followers to fifteen thousand, all on the strength of posting regularly about whatever the hell is interesting me at the time. I’ve been on Twitter a lot. I’ve also written a lot here on Medium.
I don’t know how much of a difference any of it has made.
While having fifteen thousand followers on Instagram gets me a lot of DMs from strangers and a fair number of shares, as well as the occasional interview or workshop request, it doesn’t sell as many books as one might think. Having a large audience doesn’t guarantee any individual post I make will do well, either. Or that any mutual aid post I share will get donations, for that matter. To put it simply, social media habits do not translate to actual behavior or material support.
Based on my Linktree data, I estimate that only about 15% of my Instagram followers even look into buying my book. Most people who follow me will never end up clicking the link in my bio that leads to my book and Medium essays. Instagram success only snowballs into more Instagram success. The only thing a bunch of Twitter likes seems to predict is more Twitter likes in the future.
My book sales are consistently good, so I know the word is getting out — but I don’t know how much it has to do with my actual posting. It seems to be more strongly linked to interviews I give, particularly long, in-depth podcast appearances that give listeners a strong sense of who I am and what my book’s message is. Podcast and public radio listeners like to read books, and they have the means to buy them — social media users don’t, at least not as consistently.
I don’t think most people realize how little influence you actually have, as a social media figure, on other people’s behavior. I often get requests to boost GoFundMe’s, or to call on my followers to sign a petition or attend various political actions. Sometimes I do share these calls — but unless I can make a persuasive pitch as to why somebody should follow through with them, a simple share isn’t going to make a difference. And even then, most of my audience will not be able to take action no matter how I much I beg them to.
As a general rule, social media users are busy, overwhelmed, and broke — they’re not a rich, obedient horde that will jump whenever you tell them to, or buy whatever you suggest. They’re sticking around for more of the free content you’ve already given them. And I can’t fault them for that. I have given my followers every reason to expect free posts from me. And for the most part, I enjoy making them. So I try to enjoy posting for it’s own sake, not as a means to an end. I already know that end may never come.
You are never really in control of whether a post succeeds.
Right now I am mentoring a cohort of seven writers on Medium. It’s part of a new program the site is piloting, and so far it mostly involves me reading drafts, meeting with writers, and answering their questions. This week, one of my mentees asked me why their view count was going down. After months of success, her work seemed to be flagging. Another writer chimed in to say that he, too, had seen his numbers drop lately. What was going on? What could they do to boost views back to their previous levels?
I told both these writers that while I don’t know for sure, I suspect the reason for their declining views is something entirely out of their control: the pandemic is ebbing in many of the countries where their readers live. During the height of the pandemic, social media use was artificially heightened. Many of us had nothing to do but read and stream and doomscroll all day long. Now that some wealthy, vaccine-hoarding countries like the U.S. have very low COVID numbers, people are leaving the house again. We’re socializing, and commuting to work. We’re traveling and seeing movies. We have lives again, so we’re less online.
Engagement statistics shift for all manner of reasons. I think many social media users (and writers on Medium) fixate on the vicissitudes of the “algorithm” more than they ought to. Even if you learn how to master the algorithm, it is forever changing. Platforms rise and fall, trends grow stale, and people get bored. Current events and changing seasons exert a powerful influence on which kinds of content people are looking for. It’s better to just keep on writing what you want to write, and creating the art that moves you, rather than trying to catch a wave that won’t last.
Let me clarify that when I say this, I’m not talking about the systematic censorship of Black and brown creators, queer people, sex workers, and fat people that occurs on basically every social media site. Those effects are real, and they are undeniably oppressive. As a white, thin person who works in academia, I have noticed I’m able to post about sex, drug use, flag burning, and self-harm without ever being punished. Meanwhile, numerous friends have had their social media accounts deleted for mentioning any of these subjects even once — simply because they are fat, or Black, or open about doing sex work. These aren’t the kind of variables we can just shrug off and ignore. They’re pervasive inequalities that exclude, silence, and impoverish.
In light of all this, I do find it naïve when a person who has not been oppressed in these ways complains about the unfairness of “the algorithm” or assumes they are “shadow banned” simply because a single post flopped. Some creators seem to unrealistically believe their greatest success ought to be their regular benchmark. Or they mistakenly believe that having 10,000 followers means your posts should always get about 10,000 likes.
The fact is, most of the people who follow you will miss the majority of your posts. They follow a lot more people than just you! They’re out living their lives, not refreshing their feeds constantly for an update from you. Today, it’s common for an Instagram user to follow over a thousand accounts, whereas in 2016, it was more common to only follow a couple hundred. Twitter and Facebook have been stagnant for years, in terms of new user growth and engagement figures.
All of this means that even with the undeniable influence of the algorithm, “organic reach” is on a decline on its own. Though I do wish that more of my 28,000 Medium followers read my stuff, I’m happy they’re offline doing their own thing instead of waiting for a notification from me. I’d much rather spend my time fighting against the censorship of marginalized voices than worry about why an essay of mine got two thousand claps last month, but one thousand this month. Trends come and go, but if you consistent create good work, you will eventually find your people.
I can’t let myself live and die by numbers I’ll never be able to control. As someone who is already prioritized by most platforms (by virtue of my whiteness, thinness, and “respectable” job), I know I’ll be fine even if my views take a hit. That’s why I also need to use my platforms to boost creators who are rendered more invisible than me — and work to build actual communities of writers and readers, rather than lists of followers that disappear when a specific platform dies.
What people are really looking for is connection.
Consuming digital content is a means of social snacking. It allows us to make contact with other people and feel seen and supported even when nobody’s around. This is part of why the risk of forming parasocial relationships online is so heightened. The media that brings us comfort in our darkest, loneliest hours can feel deeply intimate to us, and even become be subsumed into our identities. If you share a lot about yourself online, or make art that comforts the disaffected, you run the risk of having a lot of qualities projected onto you by other people. You also have the potential to really touch other people’s hearts. It’s important to remain conscious of the benefits and risks of that.
My most vulnerable writing inspires a lot of heartfelt, detailed private messages from people who are struggling. At times it’s been too much to bear. One of the reasons I stopped writing about sexual assault was how freely both victims and perpetrators shared gruesome details of their own experiences with me. It left me feeling used up, retraumatized, and debased. It also illustrated for me just how little social and emotional support most people have in this world, how they’ll go anywhere looking for an understanding ear.
When I write about being trans and Autistic, or speak about the need to be compassionate to people who are branded “lazy,” I get a lot of feedback from folks who have clearly been hurting for a very long time. When I speak to my own struggles in a genuine voice, and illustrate inequity in a way that helps others recognize themselves, my writing does tend to be a “success” — but more importantly, it’s something I can take pride in.
It’s also really important to me that I never exploit my ability to make a reader feel seen. I know what it’s like to be comforted by someone else’s writing, and I don’t want to betray that honest connection with a sales pitch. I also don’t want to milk my own trauma for page views. Sometimes, I just want to take a step back and blather about my favorite books and TV shows and not provoke any intense, traumatized responses from readers at all.
I am horrified by how the modern, social-media-driven internet exploits and manipulates us. It keeps us coming back for more stimulation constantly, and it hides our favorite creators using non-chronological sorting. It feeds off of outrage-filled comment sections and thrives when we are angry, scared, and sad. It uses our pain for profit. It ensnares our attention and sells that attention to advertisers. I don’t want to be complicit in any of that, though of course I am still trapped in the same system as everybody else.
There’s a lot of bad content online. Lots of derivative clickbaity junk. People are chasing the kind of viral success that’s a flash in the pan, a brief explosion of attention that doesn’t linger in anyone’s mind, and doesn’t benefit the person who created it much either. I hope my career illustrates that it doesn’t have to be this way. Disengaging from the numbers game might pay off better for you anyway. You don’t need to contort yourself into uncomfortable shapes in hopes of pleasing the ever-changing, always fickle algorithm. You can trust in your own artistic abilities and listen to your creative passion instead. And with time, you may eventually forge connections that matter, and that last — rather than just boosting your follower count.