Why do some ideas go viral and others flop?

IN HIS BOOK, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell posits that ideas become social epidemics due to the coordinated efforts of three influencers, namely Connectors, Mavens and Salespeople. In layman’s words, ideas or trends are diffused into the population by the influential opinion leaders, early adopters/domain experts and hustlers. At first glance, this formula seems plausible. However, the more we observe the nature of viral videos and messages on social media, the weaker Mr. Gladwell’s hypothesis is; the triangular theory doesn’t explain a whole lot of messages that spread like wild forest fires with no one spearheading them.
There are no actual fixers who can be called influencers or clairvoyants who can turn anything they touch into trending topics. That is to say that it’s not the people who share the messages that make the content viral. It’s the quality of the message itself that lends itself to the prospect of becoming viral or a dud.
What makes a message so sticky or unique that it stays in our memory? The first one is simplicity. Ideas that are too convoluted befuddle us, and they are forgotten quickly because they have too many moving parts that we can hardly comprehend. For example, if someone claims that the current Meitei-Kuki conflict is due to global warming that causes certain genetic mutations in the amygdala of the brain responsible for spiking emotional reactivity and testosterone levels of the Meiteis and Kukis, we will hardly be convinced but will question the sanity of that person. Instead, simple catchwords like forest rights, foreign hand, poppy, ST demand, separate administration, etc., are neat and cute and easy to remember. They stick.
The second one is the element of surprise or unexpectedness. Nobody cares about reading a message that offers little interest, information, novelty, or creativity. An effective info should pique your curiosity, like a needle poking into your brain. It should shift your mind to an unfamiliar paradigm out of the blue, forcing you to see things from an angle that was not thought of earlier. If a dog bites a woman, that’s boring (not so for the victim), but if a woman bites a dog, that’s journalism level interesting, but if a jilted lover bites the boyfriend’s dog, that will be intense.
Sticky messages must be concrete. Its two-inch mortar should explode and create a crater of 2 meters radius in your imagination. Generic content does not garner interest but contemptuous guffaws. Parents should not tell their kids to eat healthy food straight away; they should tell something like this: “Don’t forget to fill your breakfast plate with four items, an apple, an egg, plus two items of your favourite colour and eat at the grandma’s dining table facing the open windows at 7 A.M. I promise you 10 minutes of extra screen time.” It’s not bribery but making vivid anticipations.
While all memorable messages may have other characteristics, they all contain a granule of the three hallmarks: simplicity, unexpectedness, and concreteness.
The real point of contention is why we share a piece of information and keep the others gathering dust. Answering this will unpack the cause of viral messages on social media and inside the closed doors of boardrooms and bars.
The most striking is our need for approval, conformity and belonging to a group. Most of the time, you share messages with an individual or a group of which you have already formed an opinion and who are likely to appreciate your doing so. Your message is a means for strengthening a mutual relationship or fitting into the group. Before the other person or a group evaluates your shared message, you have already screened it for appropriateness. If you are lucky, you will get likes and comments praising your insight. The driving psychology is comparable to the saying, “It’s not me but the liquor talking.” The liquor, in this case, is your need for social acceptance, which is much like a drug. Sometimes, you try to sound smarter and share a weblink to an esoteric article, giving out a silent scream, “See, I am so smart; I found this out because I can understand this deep stuff, and now try your luck scratching its surface.”
Something should give you the triggers to spread an idea. Some viral topics ride piggyback on daily habits, routines, or currently hot topics. Recently, when there were drone attacks on some of the villages in Manipur, videos explaining the variety of drones, their capability, range, and jammers were uploaded and dissected. When rockets fell on Moirang, then the drone chapters were closed. We deconstructed the missiles like scientists trying to reverse-engineer the weapons and trace their origin and model. As we know, both drones and missiles have been around and used for many years in other parts of the world. Taking a cue from the news climate, even this author wrote in this column about the potential use of chemical and biological weapons. Triggers, not the devil, made me do it.
Viral ideas are emotional. They should evoke love, patriotism, hatred, disgust, empathy, superiority, helplessness, or pride. When you come across a superb material, your pulse rate should be racing, your eyes should be moist, your face should burst into a smile, your fists must clench, or you should throw away your phone in frustration (not an exhaustive list). Remember Benita Laishram?
Then comes the practical usefulness of the message. Influencers and YouTube stars have built an entire fandom based on their skills and niche craftsmanship, providing tips to enthusiasts and wannabes. Cosmetics queens, self-help gurus, yoga trainers, etc., are all the rage now. Why? They create content that is useful to beginners and those in a particular industry to learn trade secrets and shortcuts. Kim Kardashian’s fashion tips and Mr. Beast’s antics are gateway portals to the fanciful fantasies of the millions.
If you want dry statistics to be more memorable, wrap them up in story formats. It works all the time if the narrative is good enough. Mr. Donald Trump always wears a bright red tie almost daily and has 167 pairs. The simple reason is he has a fetish for it. But that’s not the story we like. Trump wears red in order to conceal the red lipstick marks left behind by his many former lovers during secret escapades. He conceived this clever idea when wife Melania discovered the taints after the Stormy Daniels episode and went mad. 167 is a commemoration of his conquests. This is more memorable. This story is not true and I made that up completely.
The last factor is the credibility, importance and visibility of the source of news or message. We tend to believe content that is shared by institutions, public figures, celebrities or actual people involved in a developing news or horse mouths. This is understandable and I am saving the newsprint in explaining it needlessly. It is rather more interesting to find out why not all the messages from the big names find an audience or multipliers every time they post the content. The simple reason is: We ignore messages that are not relevant to us, even when a God-like figure is doing the sharing. Christiana Ronaldo with a billion followers on X, tweeted today: “Something exciting in the making,” about an upcoming soccer videogame. I am not sharing that at all.
To conclude, we all are influencers in one way or another. Social media and TV are mere mediums that add efficiency and velocity to the circulation of ideas. An idea should be attractive and genre defying in the first place. Here’s a curveball before I sign off: despite our belief that social media has dominated the platforms for delivery and sharing of information, actual word-of-mouth remains the biggest influencer. Only 7% of our social interactions take place on social media (in the form of posts, tweets, and comments). We speak to each other, expending 16000 words in a day on average in the actual brick-and-mortar world. I just asked my companion, “I need a coffee now, with no sugar in my blue mug.” Those are twelve words, and I haven’t even started my monologue for today.