Contagion Goggles
My year of virality and brainrot
I’ve been Extremely Online for an Extremely Long Time, but I’ve never really been a poster. I’ve always made excuses for myself—"If I post on Instagram I’m a normie” or “If I post on Twitter I’ll be radicalized”—but I don’t know if there was ever much truth to them. The reality is that I have spent most of my life onstage: acting, debating, hosting, selling. It was nice to just sit in the proverbial cuck chair for a bit. But—lord forgive me for continuing this metaphor—cuckoldry begets cowardice, and this year in particular I felt it leaking into other parts of my life. Being content to observe is no way to live. Luckily there’s a medicine for cowardice—competence. So this year I decided that not only did I want to learn how to post, but that I was going to get very good at it. And I did.
The people who are the best at going viral are born with something I like to call “Contagion Goggles”. Memes are just ideas that everyone is suddenly having at the same time; that could happen organically, a la some sort of Jungian collective unconscious, or that could be manufactured, a la the Crocs revival. But the best memes tap into both, like Brat Summer. You can imagine Contagion Goggles as a form of nightvision, except in this case instead of heat signatures you just see memetic gas clouds—ideas spreading from person to person. The goal is to step behind the contagion and blow on it gently, ideally in the direction of your particular self-interest. I don’t think I (yet) have the magic goggles, but I do think I have been lucky with some fortuitous timing or intuition on this stuff. I noticed the contagion that “everyone wants to be an entrepreneur” in ~2016, so I dropped everything and joined Shopify. Then I noticed the contagion that “the marketplace of ideas/writing/personality is mispriced”, so I dropped everything and joined Substack in ~2020. This whole experiment was an exercise in building this muscle.
Here’s a very rudimentary framework I had for thinking about virality:
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.
I. Twitter
My homebase is Twitter (wordcels stand up), so I started there.
In December 2023 I noticed some chatter on Twitter about the city of Toronto, and how it had deteriorated as a culture, and, more importantly, that it was possible to revive it. I’m candidly unsure about Toronto broadly, but I am very confident in my friends who make up the movement, and it felt like an environment that was ripe for virality.
This was my first attempt at going viral:
Trust me I recognize that it is absolute virgin behaviour to apply a “framework” to a ~20 word tweet, but, again, I wanted to build a muscle here. So:
Contagion: I included the word “Toronto” early in the tweet. If I was right and there was a brewing desire to make culture happen in Toronto, especially among people who were just watching and hadn’t yet posted about it yet, then it would be an easy visual hook.
Tactics:
“Hit me up”. A light CTA for comments and shares, which is easy algo catnip.
“Not a serial killer and/or want to pull up”. Total layup joke for people to reply with “I’m not a serial killer” or “haha and/or”
Tailwind: Admittedly I didn’t really do anything here
I wouldn’t say this went viral exactly, but I certainly punched above my weight class (I had ~600 followers at the time and this got ~26k views). To be clear: I am very aware that this could all just be nonsense, and that it could have spread for other totally unrelated reasons, like having a pretty bookshelf or whatever. I think that’s actually totally fine, because the muscle I was building wasn’t optimizing for tactics like keywords. This whole exercise was a forcing function to pay attention to every single element of the post: the context in which I was publishing it, the person I wanted to speak to, the ordering of the words, the emotions I wanted to invoke. That’s a repeatable skillset across mediums.
My next experiment was to tug on the Twitter algo more broadly. Twitter was a ~year into its For You Page, and it was obviously attempting to grow beyond text to become TikTok, especially by prioritizing video/images. The image attachment clearly worked on my homedoxxing tweet, but that was a flash in the pan moment. I wanted to disaggregate that idea: could I specifically run experiments around mediums. I wondered if I could own a repeatable content series that was image-first.
I tried this a few weeks later:
Framework again:
Contagion:
A new medium. Again, I sensed that Twitter was prioritizing video/image posts, and thought it was worth a try to catch that wave.
Toronto murmurs again. There was a chatter around people taking ownership for their experience in the city—host more, show some agency to improve the culture around you, etc. I wrote this to specifically tug on that thread.
Tactics:
Owning a medium. I obviously did not invent short form writing, but branding it as “Screenshot essays” felt novel and important. I’ve seen other writers attempt these as “Atomic essays”, too. Tbh I actually don’t remember if I came up with the naming or David Perell did. Steal like an artist, I guess.
Owning a phrase. My favourite thinkers are sloganeers. I genuinely don’t remember if I invented “You can just do things”, but I certainly see it come up far more frequently on Twitter nowadays, and my ego obviously feeds off that. It’s important to brand and own these sorts of very simple shareable phrases. kyla scanlon and “Vibecession” come to mind.
Tailwind: Admittedly I didn’t really do anything here
This was definitely my first real experience with virality. Refreshing my notifications and totally frying my dopamine receptors with likes/follows, coworkers on the other side of the world DM’ing me my own tweet, quote tweet dunks, etc. It felt good, and though I continued the Screenshot Essay series for another few weeks, much to the continued dismay of my parents/romantic interests/employers, I generally only like the beginnings of things. I felt that Twitter was too small of a game, and if every platform was leaning into short-form video, then that was the skill I wanted to get good at.
II. Instagram
Before spinning up my Instagram burner, which I still shall not name here, I had never edited a video before. I didn’t even really watch video as a medium, and often joke that I discovered movies in ~2023. This video aversion is not me being highbrow; I think my attention span is so fried that short-form text is really all I can manage. All this to say in a roundabout way: short-form video was very foreign to me, so I had to learn it from first principles.
The broad Contagion I entered with here was that “short-form video won” but I was very obviously a few years late to that. My specific edge was: I think Substack will win, which means that writing is still underpriced, which means that writing needs to find a way to exist in a short-form video world, especially since Reels/TikTok are such good “top of funnel” platforms that most writers just have no interest in cracking. So I figured I would try to turn my “Screenshot Essay” style writing into short-form animated videos. I first went ahead and learned all the relevant tools, which I won’t spend too much time on here, though I’m happy to nerd out with anyone who wants to jam about Generative AI. TLDR I did copywork: I recreated similar viral videos from scratch to see how close I could get to the original. I recreated one video every day for ~2 weeks, after which I felt that I could technically create what I wanted to.
Those first videos sucked, but I’m pretty good now. Here’s a recent video that went viral for me (1.8M views and counting). Words by Zach Pogrob.
Framework again:
Contagion:
I did this on a micro-level from video to video, but I think when you’re growing a page the name of the project is its own Contagion. Pelosi Tracker, for example. What a banger of an idea. Chris Josephs noticed that everyone was complaining/joking about Pelosi’s flawless investing record, so he coined a page around the meme. The contagion was already spreading, he just bottled it up. My own page doesn’t have as strong of a contagion imo, but it’s broadly based on the idea that: “people are feeling sad empty and realizing that creating > consuming”
Random smattering of tactics that have worked for me:
Intentional mistakes: Reels has some weird gotcha culture where people looove to call out mistakes in the comments. I would intentionally misspell things or misattribute famous quotes and would have hundreds of commentors mentioning it. My top video has ~20M views and I think that was one of the main reasons why.
I got hyper tactical with my visual hooks, including: how many seconds each shot lasts for (especially comparing to other viral videos on this), the exact second when a caption or CTA appears on average, or A/B testing specific visual styles. Contagion generally overpowers tactics, but I think you really need to nerd out here to figure out what works for your audience.
Tailwind:
Engagement baiting: When a video starts to get traction, I have a few burner accounts that will try to start arguments in the comments, hoping to rile up other watchers into easy engagement. Extremely funny to argue with yourself in the comments online and watch people take sides.
Repurposing existing viral videos. I’d remix concepts that went viral, or straight up credit other writers and use their words. If it went viral once, it’ll probably work again.
Instagram is truly a different world than Twitter, and at my most viral, I had genuine Hollywood celebrities liking/commenting across the page. I know how naive that sounds, but even after having worked in this world for a ~decade, it’s easy to forgot how small the internet can be. But I do feel like the followers are net low quality, and I haven’t yet cracked out how to drive them to a Substack. Over a few months I racked up:
85 posts (I’d say ~50% are short form video. I’m also experimenting with Screenshot Essays as feed posts because it seems like those are more targeted to existing followers vs Reels which target net new audiences).
39,000 followers (20x the size of my Twitter)
>30M views (most of those came from a single video, but I’ve had a couple other Milli Bangers ™ )
III. Participatory Stunts
I think I’m about a year late to this last one, and it’s making me very antsy. My general feeling is that there’s always a meta game in “Internet Money” growth hacking. In 2016 it was dirt cheap Facebook ads, in 2019 it was short-form video, and in 2023 this “participatory stunt” meta began. Said another way: how can you manufacture a stunt that people want to participate in or play along with. If you squint, these metas generally look like the midwit curve meme: they typically get designed by brute force Info Product Sellers (the real degenerates of Internet Money), then copied by Ecommerce Founders (the midwits of Internet Money), and then Software Founders (the right curve of Internet Money). In this case the Midwit meme also functions as a timeline, and now that the Software founders have arrived, imo the meta is close to being squeezed dry.
I’m blurry on the specifics because this is mostly me on the outside looking in, but I think these participatory stunts were pioneered by Andrew Tate. This is old news by now, but it’s worth repeating: the For You Page killed the follower, and so in many cases killed the Big Page Affiliate model (ie. shilling products and taking a % of it). It still happens, but I think it’s probably in its death throes. Tate realized that instead of shilling his course via large pages, he could just weaponize an army of 0-follower accounts instead. The model was something like: A) a follower would start a new page that is lightly Tate / Manosphere branded (but not obviously run by him so it seems like it’s an organic movement) and then B) They would then get an affiliate code, and start reposting/editing Tate videos (you get attribution when you go viral and sell courses through your link). The FYP has a 30 day tailwind for brand new accounts, which is how this legion of affiliates truly took over TikTok in ~Summer 2023.
Framework:
Contagion:
I’m not sure how to phrase Tate’s contagion, but he definitely tapped into a particular zeitgeist. “Men good, women bad”?
Tactics:
All of his reposters were running their own tactics, too many to break down here
Tailwind:
The whole playbook was a tailwind that fed off itself; as soon as someone went viral, the rest of the ecosystem would milk its tactics. Just a good ol’ affiliate model.
Then the Ecommerce world came along. An incredibly sharp marketer named Oliver Brocato used to run a company called Tabs Chocolate, which was an aphrodisiac candy. He took Tate’s strategy to the next level:
First he hired hordes of creators to run loosely branded Tabs Chocolate accounts with the intent of going viral and getting their own affiliate cut
He then himself coordinated all of his accounts remaking each others videos when they went viral. Again: if a concept goes viral once, it’ll probably go viral again.
He topped it off by running a Discord server of reposters. They would just just rip top videos from his original set of creators and share them on Instagram/Reels/Shorts. He homeruns would go viral three times: once in the original video, then again when his legion of creators recreated the concept, and then again when his legion of reposters shared the videos to other short-form platforms.
Contagion:
Tabs is an aphrodisiac chocolate, so there’s probably something here around the loneliness epidemic, young people not having sex, etc.
Tactics:
All of the creators were running their own tactics
Tailwind:
Hiring UGC (user generated content) creators to make it seem like they were having genuine experiences with the chocolate
Getting the creators to recreate each others videos when a concept went viral
A Discord group of reposters who would repost top videos to other platforms (Reels/Shorts) and make their own affiliate cuts
Then came Software founders. I don’t think anyone is using as blatant of a reposting strategy here yet, but many nifty marketers are getting new audiences involved in scale to astroturf virality.
Made On Verse is a “digital bedroom app” (Contagion: Zoomers yearn for a Y2K internet), who allegedly went from 0-10M downloads by starting a trend where you connect your Spotify and then they auto generate you a one-page digital bedroom that showcases your personality. People love being told who they are.
Umaxx helps men become more attractive (Contagion: looksmaxxing) that offered a facescan to rate you on a variety of stats (“jawline”), and then gave them a playbook on how to make themselves more attractive.
Autopilot is a neobank that helps you invest like a politician. They’re the company behind the Pelosi Tracker, and they’ve run a hilarious playbook that includes sending a fake Nancy Pelosi to go gamble with famous YouTubers.
This third section is still very new to me, and I haven’t actioned anything yet here, but I think it might be the best example yet of: identifying a contagion, planning a very tactical stunt around it, and then creating tailwinds to maximize its potential. I have a WIP framework for how these stunts work, but I might be totally wrong, so of course I’ll be a coward and only flex my stats if it ends up working. Watch this space: some colleagues and I are cooking something very soon.
At a Substack All-Hands last week, Chris Best riffed on a great idea about wormholes. My interpretation of his take was basically that, wormholes are very real in the context of company/lifebuilding and if you position yourself in the right place at the right time, you can time travel through 5 years of progress ~overnight. Bluesky is a good example: they’ve done a fantastic job positioning themselves as Other Twitter, and as soon as Real Twitter started to bleed, they were able to attract millions of people overnight. I think my most formative lesson from my Year Of Virality And Brainrot is basically that you can consciously nudge yourself towards a wormhole, both in company-building and in life. Not only are Contagion Goggles real, but they’re a muscle that you can develop—you can both manufacture and bottle incoming memetic clouds.
Do you dare shitpost your way into disturbing the universe?
evil genius shit
Sounds like you're a smart cookie, Shai! But the only unresolved that I'm wondering about is the identity of this burner Instagram ....