You can't manufacture virality. Remember "Gangnam Style"? People weren't even interested in the follow-up video. Quick, name it! (It's entitled "Gentleman," and if you know that you're entitled to automatic qualification for the next hobby horse nationals. Meanwhile, "Gentleman" does have 1.6 billion views on YouTube, but that does not mean its impact lasted. Everybody checked it out, and then... Meanwhile, "Gangnam Style" has 5.2 billion views. If you've seen the trick once, that's enough.)
But "Gangnam Style" hit before TikTok, before participatory media became everything. You just don't want the word to spread, you want people to use the basics to create something new, you want them involved, you want them to OWN IT!
You don't fight hoi polloi creation, you embrace it. The more time people dedicate to making clips with your content, the longer your content lasts.
So an individual spreading the word is not enough. Sure, if you're the very first, you can get props, assuming anybody knows, and most people don't care.
And sure, some of the eating pets pics and videos were released immediately and gained traction, but it took a little time for the great ones to appear...half a day? Remember the cycle is short. Which is why you want something that lasts forever, but this is rare.
Like last night's VMAs... Remember when the VMAs were not only the talk of the town, but the world? Milton Berle and RuPaul. A spontaneous interaction. The appearance of Pee Wee Herman not long after his arrest. Is anybody talking about last night's VMAs? I've seen news stories, but there's no social media virality, whereas I'm still cracking up over pics and videos of pets in my feeds.
And it's not only my feeds, it's my email and iMessages. Everybody wants to play. Because it's so ridiculous.
Do I think Trump's statements will negatively impact his campaign?
Well, so far nothing has.
Then again, the Democrats have changed their strategy. Rather than try to be serious, they're standing at arm's length and making fun of Trump. This started with "weird." And when Trump was going off the rails on Tuesday night, Kamala held her hands to her chin and smiled in a way school kids do when the object of their attention doesn't realize they're committing a faux pas, that they're a laughingstock.
Of course Trump doubled-down, by entering the media room and doing his own spin. Talking about how he won the debate and quoting numbers to that effect. When you're going down you don't fight, you take a break, hope that it blows over.
Now in order to go viral today not only do you have to create content that the public can utilize to create new content, you need to be in the game constantly.
This is a paradigm older acts complain about and younger acts don't think twice about.
You never know when your lucky break will come. You never know what will cause your lucky break. But talk to anybody who's ever had one and you'll find out...the action that caused the break was never the one they anticipated would do it. The well-planned action, crickets. The one you do reluctantly, on a whim, that spreads. When you're less invested, your attitude reflects this. It's the difference between a studio recording and a live one. The former is studied, worked over. The latter is spontaneous, you can capture lightning in a bottle.
And one thing that is at the heart of most virality is humanity. Click tracks and building a record instrument by instrument reduce this, as do multiple writers and remixes/effects. You want to be able to polish it, because getting it right out of the box, with just the basics, is so difficult to do.
The reason so much music does not resonate with the public is because it's lacking humanity. Not in the lyrics, although there can be a problem there too, but in the basic music. We're so far from the garden that people expect that four decade old 808 sound on every record. Where's the surprise?
Records are the essence of virality. If they contain that humanity and capture the zeitgeist. And this is why sixties tunes and classic rock over index in the culture. It was about experimentation, it was about being different, the public couldn't stop paying attention.
So Trump is in the news 24/7. And it's been working to his advantage. In that he still takes up most of the air in the media.
But Trump has veered so far from the truth that he was just begging for someone to push him over, he was ready to topple like Humpty Dumpty.
The "Access Hollywood" tape had legs, might have sunk Donald if it weren't for Comey reopening investigation into Hillary's server. But we're used to sex scandals. And the public can't participate in them, own them. But comedy?
Keep throwing things against the wall and something will stick. But you don't know what it is and if you've lost track of the plot beware.
Other than J.D. Vance, no one is defending the inane idea that immigrants are eating cats and dogs in Ohio. Furthermore, Trump and his team illustrated that despite Truth Social and his tweeting, they really don't have a grip on the internet. The net is full of b.s. and scams. And you can get away with forwarding this crap to like-minded, narrow-visioned friends, but when you put it into the world at large...it's going to be scrutinized, and debunked.
Turns out this election is not about the issues, but the penumbra, and Trump and his team didn't realize this. No one wants to hear about fracking, even taxes or the border, they want to see the two candidates wrestle, they're waiting for one to touch the third rail. And wrestling is a good analogy, in that it's scripted entertainment, fake. And Kamala was pretty scripted Tuesday night, and it was her off the cuff stuff that resonated most. As for Trump... When he went off script he lost all of us.
So if this stops being about Trump and Harris and what they stand for, and becomes about how laughable Trump is, that might be to Harris's advantage. No one wants to be associated with a laughingstock. Even Fox said Harris won the debate. Only in Trump's deranged mind was he the winner.
So, remember, ink is one thing, virality is another. Don't point to how many stories you've got on Google, pull up Instagram and TikTok and X and see how often it comes up in your feed. That's the measure of virality.
And this is what the mainstream doesn't understand and to the degree it does hates it. Because that means they've got no control. And let's be clear, they've got less control than any time in history!
Most people in America can't even name two songs by Taylor Swift, Kendrick Lamar, Drake, the Weeknd...but if you paid attention to the press, you'd think they're ubiquitous. But all of the public doesn't want the same thing.
But this election is binary, so there's amazing focus. And it's the only game we're all focused on. Forget music, forget the NFL, everybody's got an opinion on the election. And when Trump steps in it and then doubles-down on something that was not vetted that is almost impossible to believe, people are going to notice.
You remember the Kennedy assassination. You remember 9/11. You're going to remember that Trump said immigrants were eating cats and dogs.
Now if you're Tiny Tim, if you're an influencer, all publicity is good publicity. But if you're selling the aforementioned humanity, if you have any credibility, this is not true. Be wary of doing things off brand with the hopes of virality.
This is what we live for in a controlled country. The unexpected. The spontaneous.
We've had two big events this year.
One, Biden dropping out.
Two, Trump telling us that pets are in peril in Springfield, Ohio.
Trump gets the trophy here. He's the strongman who rang the bell at the county fair. But he doesn't even realize it. If he did, he'd make fun of himself, neutralize his words.
Trump is built for a passé era. When you could deny, deny, deny and stay above the fray. No one is above the fray anymore, we're all in it together, and if you don't have a sense of humor about yourself, you're ripe for excoriation.
I can't stop laughing at the posts. The pictures of cats dressed up as law enforcement. Others talking about the risk to pets. The warnings to stay away from Springfield.
This is genius.
But it's not helping Trump. He didn't have to lay out this craziness, but he's lost touch with the public.
Don't you do the same.
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