Mindreading and Ideacide
Some of us believe that we can turn our successes into formulas and that if we can just figure out what people want to see and hear, they'll want to consume the content we create. We study analytics to see any patterns of predictable behavior to replicate what has already been successful, only to find that we could release the exact same video on two different days and get two entirely different reactions. Yet we keep looking for the magic formula - that one piece of virality that will push our visibility from obscurity to influencer overnight. We study trends and attempt to read the minds of potential content consumers, trying to know in advance what they will be in the mood for and then bending our creativity in that direction. It seems that of those who have been successful, extremely few were overnight. The majority of people who have grown large audiences have been consistently releasing the best content they could muster, and the audience decided if it was interesting ...