notes on virality

a conversation with my autobiographer

A narrative framing I am experimenting with is this idea of entering into conversations with my writing by pretending like I am talking to my autobiographers, aka, my future selves. Today’s piece is about a recent tweet of mine that unexpectedly blew up, as interviewed by me.

Holocene by Bon Iver

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background context

I woke up yesterday to seeing numbers on a recent tweet unexpectedly climb. From 600 likes, to 1K, to 10K, to 50K and now at 150k+ likes and counting with over 5M views, making it my most viral post ever.

the tweet in question, reaching much greater audiences than expected that kalesalad, a meme IG account with 3M+ followers, even reposted my tweet.

How did you come up with this idea? Where do you get your inspiration from?

Here’s the thing: I don’t exactly sit down with the intention to ‘come up with ideas.’ They sort of naturally emerge as a result of striving to live a life true to myself every day, and I just make sure to write the ideas down as soon as I think of them. With this tweet in particular, I happened to come across the phrase “ransom note” while I was doing my morning scroll on Substack¹, and I just thought about how it’d be funny if I wrote soft threats to my friends to encourage them to pursue their dreams. The reason I automatically think in this way though is because of how awesome my friends are, and how chats like these are a common occurrence in our group chat:

Recalling these produced my caption, “DO IT OR ELSE.” As for the quote in the graphic, I didn’t think too hard about it because it was a reminder I’ve already been giving myself recently, as I’ve thought about wanting to do all the things on my backlog.

This story is just me trying to say idea generation is not what you need to worry about — it’s creating the supporting infrastructure to write down and incubate your ideas, and fostering the environment for you to explore them. It’s focusing on living each day in the present so you can pay attention to what excites you and absorb what’s going on, and intentionally consuming a diverse variety of media: film, books, art, music. It’s going on walks and bike rides and really looking at your surroundings, it’s playing your favourite sport day in and day out, it’s talking to friends over a cup of tea. Sometimes the ideas are rooted in your past, too, which may surprise you with gifts every once in a while.

I simply place myself inside of the worlds I want to live in (if none are present, I aim to create them), and let the ideas emerge from there.

What happened when you noticed there was some traction?

One thing I did do after the initial tweet was deliberately strategize what I should post next, to ride the momentum I was getting as an experiment to see how far I could push it. I recalled a framework for virality from a piece my friend S wrote on his experience with virality too.² To produce my own tailwind, I noted down what made people drawn to the original post: notably, the aggressively positive energy, paired with an aesthetic visual, subtle notes of humour, and situated within the context of the origin story.

Without any of these components, I don’t think my tweet would’ve been as successful as it was. I decided to see if making another tweet in the same style and arranging them in different phrases would also be popular. I was right. While not as popular as the original, it did soar over 20K likes and 700K views (as of time of writing). I also used the tactic of quote-tweeting my own viral tweet with the new graphics, and subsequently linking that new tweet in the thread of the viral tweet, adding another humorous caption to grab attention. I was replying to requests from people for additional quotes or wallpapers, which gained traction too.

tweet experiment #2

What’s next?

Now, I could’ve pushed this further and started making an entire wallpaper pack etc. or build my own app. In another life, I believe I could create an entire personal brand out of this as it seems there’s a real market out there for creative x hope/obsession-core content.

But if I’m being honest, it’s just not something I’m currently interested in. I’m not interested in the attention/potential opportunities to monetize off of something similar to this, given this isn’t my main craft (I’d much rather be known for something and make a more lasting impact pertaining to product design/writing/community in specific). The real value I’ve been getting though is the meta of observing how this has resonated with and positively impacted so many people.

I would like to take my own advice and focus on finishing the projects I already have on my plate instead. After all, I make things for myself. That tweet was a reminder to me, first and foremost, and it just turns out there are many people just like me.

learnings

What did you learn from this experiment?

So much. I’m already littering them throughout this piece, but here are some loose thoughts as well:

1. There is a small window of opportunity if you want to capitalize off any sort of fame. I felt this pressure to keep producing while people were excited, promote myself while it was gaining traction, because I knew it would die down or atleast slow its rate of reach within a day or so. People kept telling me what to do, telling me what they thought I should do next, how I should leverage it. At first I wanted to follow the thread of excitement, see where it goes. But the thing was, intuitively, I feel most at peace following other things that excited me more and the existing projects I value. I’m continuing to stick by this, unless I feel like making anything else related for fun.

2. I’m realizing just how far any one individual’s impact can go. This isn’t just impacting me, it’s impacting the millions of eyes its reached, it’s impacting their loved ones, and the people I love who see it circulating.

3. There are so many people in the world, seeing the numbers was actually mind-shattering. I was reaching Spanish twitter, Japanese twitter, and more. Just helps put things into perspective.

4. Just when I think I’ve hit my peak, the previous ceiling breaks and a higher one is formed. It’s probably going to die down after 10k. Oh, it’s at 50k now? It’ll die down now. Wait.. you’re telling me it’s at 100k?! While this might’ve been a lucky stint and not be the case for everything in life, it’s showing me just how much bigger I can dream. Surprise yourself. You can soar higher.

5. Practically, people seem to really love A) a broad generalization that they shoehorn into their own circumstances e.g. a motivational phrase, and B) a pretty visual. Those two alone are already pretty good for virality, but combining those two in different permutations would likely yield a lot of net positive results.

Have you gotten this much attention before with previous content? What feels different this time?

I wouldn’t say I’ve “gone viral” in any of my past tweets, but I have definitely had some good traction on a few. The difference though, is they were mostly shitposts (joke tweets). There wasn’t really a tangible benefit other than a laugh or two from folks, it was fun but didn’t really do anything for me.

This time however, I was in awe. I watched in realtime as people quote-tweeted my image and shared the projects they were working on, how they were inspired to get up and start working on their projects after seeing my tweet, or tagging their friends to encourage them too.

some wholesome responses :) michael even created a tool inspired by my tweet to recreate something similar!

I feel this has greatly amplified my existing perspectives on the world. I’m generally an optimist, which I know is not how everyone sees the world (and I definitely have some negative reactions in my replies). But for the most part, I can tell feelings are shifting in the reactions to my tweet, that people start believing in themselves too, because of this ironic well-intended tough love. I see it in the thousands of strangers through the screen, in my friends who know about this, and in myself.

At my core, I’ve always cared about fostering the type of environment that allows people to experiment to their heart’s content. It’s really magical to see people come together in the pursuit of the things that make their heart sing. This tweet feels like one form of that, in a scale far beyond my wildest imaginations.

What side effects do you think things like this produce?

Like I mentioned, people saw the tweet and ran with it, believed it, bought into it enough. I think this is plenty reason to make things, if not for yourself it’s so that other people might want to make things too. Thus it’s also so important for people to share their ideas, because sharing inherently permits other people to share. I’ve learned this lesson many times through my friend T, has spent much of his life this past year running experiments along a similar vein.

from @tommytrxnh

This can be further explained through the concept of adjacent possibles³. When one of my friends share a project or initiative they’re passionate about, it inspires. It sends a signal: it was possible for me, it’s possible for you too. You then start having this collective of people lifting each other up from actively pursuing their ideas. It could either be positive sum motivation, or this culture of “one-upping” in a productive way (i.e. oh you did that? i WILL pursue my ideas so that YOU are motivated to do so too which in turn forces ME to do so again etc., like creative rivalry).

When you surround yourself with people who remind you to push the limits of what you could ever imagine was possible for yourself, you rise to become the person they see you as. It’s why it’s so important to be surrounded by people who inspire you, who believe in you. It’s why I feel so lucky everyday to be surrounded by my people who do exactly that. People who motivate me to raise my ceiling, so that I can raise my floor.

from a friend’s lecture I attended, “Into the Microverse: The Art & Science of Worldbuilding” by Anson Yu as a part of the Toronto Society’s Viaduct series

How do you *really* feel about all of this?

This virality has somehow forced me to really sit down and process everything that’s happened up in my life up until this point, and how it’s all come about. I’m suddenly really emotional thinking about how good I have it, and I’m not trying to sound standoff-ish by saying this, but I just can’t help but feel filled with overwhelming joy and love and hope because of how much I’ve been positively impacted by the people around me. It’s funny because in my head I’m like this is just one tweet, it’s not like i’m tube girl or anything. Yet, the impact feels huge. If I feel this much off of one thing, I can only imagine how similarly some of my content creator friends must feel.

But still, I’m so grateful. I’m so grateful for my friends, and I’m so grateful for everything that has led me to the life I’m living now. Sometimes you forget how good you have it until you really take a step back.

I don’t think I can say it enough. Thank you everyone for everything.

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life roundup 𐙚₊˚⊹

• i was actually working on a different piece i was going to release hopefully soon on a somewhat related topic, but then this tweet happened and i felt i had to write about it. a good example of letting the ideas naturally emerge, and the essays will write themselves!

• cut my hair and dyed it red again, but this time it’s more of a deep red-brown-purple, and i really love it. i find myself expanding my view on what colours i have on me, and red is one i always thought i would dislike. but i’m actually a really big fan of red right now! there are so many more colours i like than i thought

  • i live my life in seasons, my seasons have colours. i’m in season red right now. maybe next month will be season blue, who knows!

• heart is full from many cny festivities this year!! i have never actually made dumplings before so it was my first time and i did it twice on separate occasions with friends, i am so grateful

  • it is the year of the snake which is my year, but this also means it is worse for me, so i diligently did as many preparations as i could to maximize my luck.

• went to an open type exhibition with my friends AW, MM, FG, and it was the loveliest time followed by poutine and apple pie at Lakeview Diner

media i’ve been loving╰(*´︶`*)╯♡

• watching: Singles Inferno S4, and also finished Season 2 in the mean time. Also still watching Love Scout, and Hajime no Ippo!

• listening to: a lot of c-r&b in the spirit of the new lunar year, the new got7 album, old nostalgic playlists of mine like those that remind me of nights spent listening to buskers in Yeouido, and visions of summers playing spikeball in grass fields.

shoutouts ⋆⭒˚｡⋆

• M for our 4-year accountability streak

• Cynthia for making me a red bracelet on CNY because I didn’t have one and I wanted to be protected (Traditional culture to be gifted a red bracelet by an older sister/mother) :’)

• KV for being the only other person as insane as me to commute to Vaughan in order to play volleyball

• CM for reading every blogpost and telling me about them, and recommending me the Korean classes I’m now taking :)

• of course, everyone who supported me throughout this crazy last 24h in general, and all the love for the post <3

  

1. my way of getting the doomscroll kick while feeling somewhat productive

2. “Contagion: Every day there are new gas clouds that are spreading in our collective idea space. Some will quickly disappear, other will take on momentum of their own, and some have to be manufactured to spread. I think these generally first manifest as vibes (ie. Brat Summer: people are sick of optimization culture and want to live up their youth)

Tactics: This is just platform-specific tactics, and often they don’t last very long. Things like hooks and CTAs land in this camp, and I wouldn’t overindex on them, but I do think that they’re an important muscle to build.

Tailwind: Once something gets initial signal, you have to be very conscious in how you fan the flames of virality.” — Shaiyan Khan, Contagion Goggles

3. I first read about the adjacent possibles through this article linked, and it completely reframed how I thought about my own potential. The influence of the adjacent possible is realized through the people you surround yourself with: people who are similar enough to you doing extraordinary things (or just anything you think is out of reach) that make you believe, hope, and dream—that you can do it, too.