I posted something in the GenX subReddit that went viral. Within 2 hours, it had more than 13,000 views and dozens of comments. By the next day it was over 250K views, 3600 upvotes and 300 comments.
I’ve pasted the post below. It was a simple nostalgic memory I had that morning. I wondered if anyone else in my generation had similar experiences.
I was only slightly curious and expected a handful of replies.
Clearly, it hit a nostalgia nerve for quite a few people.
I suspect that after the initial burst of views & responses that it triggerred some kind algorithmic placement at the top of many people’s feeds.
Going viral certainly wasn’t due to the quality or insight of my post. I’ve written many that were better.
I’ve been posting online on various various forums since the old AOL chatroom days back in the late 90s. I’ve been blogging regularly since 2017 writing more than 1700 posts. Nothing I’ve ever written before has gotten any where close to this level of attention.
The experience was…weird.
It got me thinking I could understand how people would want to to try to “game the system” and figure out the algorithms to generate views/clicks/likes for personal satisfaction, money or business purposes. It’s kind of like winning a hand at blackjack when there’s no money being gambled.
It took minimal time and effort to generate the content I posted. I did nothing to promote it. It just hit whatever combination was required to push it to a bigger audience (I’m guessing) and voila, I’m a viral sensation.
I have no plans to chase more viral success. I couldn’t care less about random strangers posting likes and generic comments like “Yes! Me too!”
A few comments shared touching nostalgic memories from readers which was pleasant, but nothing extraordinary.
I think this was the peak of my online fame. I’m good with that.
Here’s the post:
>>>>snip<<<<
Did you sing into the fan?
When I was a little kid playing alone I would often sing into the fan. My “lyrics” were made up, on-the-fly narratives about whatever I was playing. I got really into setting up Cowboys & Indians or Army men battles and trying to project a deep voiced theme song behind them.
This was my preferred fan style.
—— I would also fool around in front of it on high opening my mouth wide and letting the wind distort my face (ala bug bunny cartoon style).
—— I also liked sticking something in the fan at slower speeds to manually stop the blades or throwing something lightweight into it on high speed so it could fire out a small missile.
Am I the only one who did this? Did you play box fan games I missed out on?