Never Going Viral - The Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me

I Am No Slave to the Algorithms or Trends

My 15 Minutes Never Came

If only I had a penny for every time someone told me over the years, 'People get viral all the time. Why don't you ever get viral?'. Truth be told, I wanted to. But with the wisdom of hindsight, I’m grateful it never happened.

Do you know that most lottery winners end up squandering their winnings and then finding themselves in a worse financial situation than they were before they won?

Ever wonder why this happens? I’ll circle back to this.

Going Viral is an Accident

Much like winning a lottery jackpot, although with better odds. And it's these better odds that make you think you can play a hand in it. Over time, you start developing a knack for what might tick and what might not.

Now, here’s the problem.

The algorithms are designed to encourage short-term thinking and discourage long-term creativity.

It trains your brain to think in terms of what’s trendy and popular at the moment and by rewarding just that, the algorithms discourage people from exploring bigger, grander ideas.

The mental bandwidth that could have been channeled to create something sustainable, meaningful, substantial, and timeless is instead wasted on mindless trends and fleeting fads. That’s the unwritten rule of growing on social media. It’s a colossal waste of cerebral resources.

To climb the social media ladder this way, you're essentially outsourcing your self-worth to the algorithm.

Folks are chasing popularity and virality instead of creating things that have depth and meaning. And they're not just wasting their own time, they're contributing to a culture where there's so much superficial content online, with little to offer in terms of insight or substance. Bombardment of triviality with noise, noise everywhere!

The Algorithm Hustle

Even if you manage to crack the algo, it’s a moving target. They change it all the time. Constantly trying to reverse-engineer and game the system, instead of just focusing on creating great content is nothing but short-term thinking.

You end up spending so much time learning the "rules of the game" that you forget what the game is even about in the first place. When the platform tweaks the algorithm, poof! Your hard-earned knowledge turns obsolete. Just when you think you've gotten a hang of it, the goalposts shift.

Accidental Success vs. Intentional Success

A quick hit of validation that comes from going viral doesn’t lead to anything meaningful in the long run because it doesn’t teach you anything, there’s no learning curve.

Lottery winners can win money but they don’t win financial education with it.

Education is something that you have to earn through deliberate effort. Being an accidental trend can give you your 15 minutes of fame, but there will always be a new kid in town.

Each new viral star eclipses the last.

So when it all goes away, you won't know how to get viral again. The rules keep changing and your generation is not getting any younger.

Lottery winners and accidental celebrities cannot replicate it but someone who has done it slowly and mindfully by learning the timeless principles of content creation, technology building, marketing, and business all while crafting valuable content, innovating on the way, building their reputation, and being useful to the world hasn't just learned the rules of the game but can manipulate and orchestrate them at their whim.

They're the ones pulling the strings and creating the trends, rather than being subject to them. They have true agency over their destiny, rather than being at the mercy of random chance.

Why play a game you haven’t invented? You will always be playing catch-up.