Last week, I hosted a Town Hall event on Zoom titled, “How to Go Viral in 2026.” There was so much interest, it filled to 100% capacity…
On the call, I reverse-engineered (in detail) how a piece I recently wrote titled, “The Shape of Enshittification,” went completely viral across every platform on which it was posted.
Look, with what generative AI technology is capable of…
And with the amount of AI-generated content officially surpassing the amount of human-generated content published on the internet…
When it comes to creating content, it’s never been easier to get into the game, but it’s never been harder to stand out.
(And standing out is not getting any easier.)
The amount of content that gets created each passing day – accelerated by AI – continues to explode exponentially, which is why the skill of creating content that actually gets seen, shared, and spread in your market has never been more valuable.
In today’s issue of The Digital Contrarian, I’m going to show you exactly how to do just that.
I’m going to share (some of) the secrets I revealed on the Town Hall session earlier this week, as well as my “how to go viral” AI prompt that I gave away on the call if you’re looking to write your first viral piece.
With all that said, let’s begin with the Four Ways to Go Viral…
Silly, Sexual, Scandalous, or.... Smart?
At the end of the day, there are basically four ways to make something go viral online. But three out of these four ways will torch your credibility.
- You can do something silly. Memes, jokes, dancing on TikTok. The stuff we’ve all seen get passed around the internet a million times.
- You can do something sexual. Taking off your shirt and showing skin will make stuff get seen and spread. (Like it or not, this is how the world works.)
- You can do something scandalous. Get caught up in the right controversy (or be the one to stir the pot) and the internet will tell that story for days.
All three of these ways have the same problem: While you may capture attention, none of these moves will cultivate trust. And they will definitely not make people want to buy from you.
There is only one path that does all three of these things: capture attention, cultivate trust, & create desire to buy.
You have to say something smart.
The 5 "Viral Factors" That Will Determine Whether Your Next Piece Goes Viral.
Going viral involves a lot of luck.
There is no magic button you can push that guarantees your next piece will pop. But there are “Viral Factors” that will massively stack the deck in your favor.
Smart alone isn’t enough. You need to structure your content in a very specific way if you want it to be seen, shared, and spread by strangers on the internet beyond your existing audience of devoted friends and followers.
Picture the following Five Factors as jobs your piece of content needs to do, in order. Skip any one of these, and your piece is likely to die on the vine at that step in the process.
FACTOR #1 : Hacking the Zeitgeist
The job: earn the impression.
Before anyone will read and share your content, a platform’s algorithm has to decide to show it in the first place. Platforms already know what their users care about. If you’re not tapping into that, your content will never get shown to strangers on the internet.
The most effective way to write content that actually gets shown is to “Hack the Zeitgeist.”
What do I mean by that?
First, by zeitgeist I mean the prevailing cultural mood, collective mindset, and shared values within a specific group of people at any given moment. In other words, the dominant trends, conversations, and emotional climate that dictate what your audience cares about, fears, or desires right now as we speak.
For example, in “The Shape of Enshittification,” the subtitle speaks to something that a whole slice of the world that I write for is feeling in their bones right now:
Books that no longer get read, an internet that no longer gets surfed, & the end of social media as we know it…
These are all conversations showing up within the market I serve.
How do you know what’s dominating the zeitgeist of your market?
Part of it is having your finger on the pulse by being both a geek (i.e., a hyper-consumer) within your market while at the same time being a nerd (i.e., a hyper-creator) within that market as well.
But if you’re stuck for ideas and need a little help, AI can also be useful.
Below is a simple prompt you can use to “Hack the Zeitgeist” of your market. (Originally built within Claude, feel free to use in ChatGPT, Gemini, or Grok if you prefer.)
Here’s a simplified version you can copy/paste:
You are my zeitgeist researcher. This is a standalone research task. Ignore our past conversations and any prior context, so nothing biases the result.
I publish thought leadership at the intersection of [THEME A] and [THEME B]. Tell me what is genuinely live in that space right now, this week. Not yesterday's news. I'm looking for the conversations, tensions, and emotional currents that people in this space are actively obsessing over at this moment.
For each one, give me the specific data or evidence behind it (studies, headlines, posts, numbers), and rank them by how charged and current they are right now.
One meta-tip while we’re here: The fastest way to write any prompt is to ask the model to build it for you. Tell it what you’re trying to do, what your constraints are, and let it hand you the prompt. That is exactly how this one was written.
FACTOR #2 : The Holy Grail of Hooks
The job: stop the scroll.
“Hacking the Zeitgeist” gets your piece into the feed. But your hook is what stops people from scrolling.
Every hook is made up of two halves. First, you’ve got your visual hook, the image or thumbnail people see first. Second, you’ve got your verbal hook, the headline or words designed to capture attention.
The “Holy Grail of Hooks” is when you come up with something where those two independent halves amplify each other in a “one plus one equals three” scenario.
For example, in “The Shape of Enshittification,” the featured image was a set of rainbow-colored shapes I pulled from deep inside an academic research study.
On its own it is just… a bit curious.
The “caption” I added above the image sets the context and is designed to create intrigue in the reader’s mind:
That then leads the reader to the headline below the image, which raises the stakes in such a way that the reader feels compelled to click to find out what this essay is all about…
The “one plus one equals three” effect happens because “shape of AI writing” image (i.e. the rainbow colored turds) and the word “shape” in the headline (i.e. The “Shape” of Enshittification) magnify one another, and the reader makes the connection between the two, with a little smirk.
There’s also a “seasoning” lesson here as well.
One of the reasons this hook worked so well is because it was seasoned with the faintest tinge of “silly” on top of “smart.” But just a pinch. If you over-season, it’s easy to ruin an entire piece. A little tongue-in-cheek humor goes a long way.
That said, I almost didn’t hit send on this piece.
It was nearly 2 a.m. when I finished writing. Bleary-eyed, I started having second thoughts. What if I went too far? What if this gets me canceled? There was nobody around I could ask to get a second opinion.
I decided to send it anyway.
And it led me to realize the importance of FACTOR #3.
(To be continued…)
* * *
That’s where we’ll pick things up next week…
In Part II, I’ll walk you through the final three Viral Factors, the ones designed to get your piece read all the way through and actually shared.
I’ll hand you the viral scorecard we built to grade any piece against all five (including your own), and I’ll show you the single biggest mistake I made with “The Shape of Enshittification,” and what I’d do differently next time.
One more thing before I go.
This week I’m about to open up something super special and unique. It’s tied to the launch of my new book, Return to Real, and it’s the most hands-on, in-person opportunity I’ll be making available all year.
Want the first look?
You can get yourself onto the early notification list here:
I’ll be sharing the details in the coming days. If you’d like the first look before it opens to the public, keep an eye on your inbox.
(BTW – More than half of all spots were taken LIVE on the Town Hall this week).
I’ll be in touch with more details shortly.
In the meantime…
Remember to hug the ones you love.
And until then,
Ryan :-)
