We thought we were smart, but we were just lucky

Going viral means your idea evokes a cultural response.

Virality springs from the qualities of your content that are funny, shocking, or surprising. People’s first impression demands further investigation. They believe that spreading your idea will either enhance their power or deepen their peace of mind.

But despite everyone’s best effort, virality can’t be ordered, faked, planned, forced or reverse engineered. More often than not, it’s lightning in a bottle. A function of timing and luck.

Fitch, the evolutionary biologist and author, explains it as follows:

Some memes are fortunate at birth. They represent clear new concepts, blessed with a memorable name, and have prominent intellectual parents who ably shepherd them through the crucial initial process of dissemination, clarification and acceptance. Many other memes, though, are less fortunate in one or more of these respects, and through no fault of their own languish, for decades or even centuries, in the shadows of their highborn competitors.

My nametag idea went viral two different times. First, on my college campus, without the aid of digital media. It was a purely grassroots, organic word of mouth marketing accident. But by the time graduation rolled around, everybody seemed to know me, or at least know of me. Very strange and exciting.

The second time it went viral was about a year later. A local paper ran an article about my little experiment. And that piece was sent out on a national newswire. Within a few months, hundreds of media outlets around the world were calling for interviews on a weekly basis. My website even shut down once because of too much traffic. Super cool.

However, there was no strategy behind this effort. It was just a ride the world took me on before I was ready to go on one. And so, there is no credit for me to take. Simple fact is, the meme was fortunate at birth. Some guy wearing a nametag all day, every day was funny, surprising and fascinating. It struck a cultural chord.

Are you looking to go viral? Don’t hold your breath. There’s no formula.

All you can do is keep trying lots of stuff so luck has a chance to find you.

What shocking, surprising and funny thing are you doing that demands further investigation?