WRITING

How It Feels to Finally Celebrate a Viral Story

Lizzy Magie did it for me

What a joy! What an experience! What a cherry on the cake for me. I did it! I finally have a viral story and it lands me many new contacts, good opportunities, and interested readers.

The people who follow me for longer know I’m an impact writer. I want to change something in our world. I want people to understand how Nature, our Planet, and our Universe work.

How we can create our human systems in line with Gaia.

In my work life, I’m a systemic designer and educator. I have meetings with students and university colleagues. I create films with them. And podcasts. And I work with farmers, fishermen, nurses, and artists on the land. I restore ecosystems, have my hands in the soil a lot, and find ways to add abundance to all of our lives with microbes and fungi.

In my free time, I’m a mermaid. I love to swim in the sea and in rivers and lakes. I hike through fields. And I play with our grandchildren (7, 5, and 3 years old) and their friends. Baking pancakes. I’m definitely loving my vibrant, adventurous life.

Despite the fact that I have illness issues right now.

Every morning I write. It’s the first thing I do. I always write at least one post for LinkedIn and sometimes a new story for Medium. My best writing goes to our book Abundanism (to be published this year) and articles for Dutch and international newspapers, and other publications.

My topics are broad. Life. Economy. Ecology. Energy. Mobility. City life. Systems thinking. Complexity. Common sense. Nature’s wonders. Wild Women. Mental health. Happiness. Love. Synchronicity.

And now I have a viral story. An Easter present.

This is what happened.

LinkedIn and Facebook

I’m following many changemakers online to be inspired by their stories. And if I repost, I always credit them. However, reposting from LinkedIn on LinkedIn isn’t working properly. You always get the whole post when I just want the article or picture or reel.

Resharing a whole post on LinkedIn is bad practice for surfing algorithms. They often stay unread. It’s their policy to want original posts, I guess.

So, lately, I started getting my pictures, reels, and articles from Facebook and Pinterest (and of course from the newspapers and online pubs I follow) and republish them on LinkedIn. Facebook isn’t my platform. They only give you visibility when you pay for adverts. And that’s not what I want to do.

I’m so glad my new practice proves successful!

The Viral Story

This is my viral story. It’s a story about the game Monopoly. A game we all know. But the real history of the game is fascinating. It was invented by a woman, Elizabeth or Lizzy Magie.

She designed two sets of rules for the game. A profit-based set driven by competition. And a prosperity-based set driven by collaboration. She wanted people to experience both. And choose.

A wise woman, this Elizabeth Magie! And of course, I love to be a publicist for all the wise women in our history. They have been erased far too long. I can give them some posthumous credit and fame.

This is my text, inspired by a Facebook post I came across. I heard the story before, but now it was time to write about it for my audience.

Monopoly wasn’t invented by the Parker Brothers, nor the man they credited. In 1904, Monopoly was originally called The Landlord’s Game, and was invented by a radical woman. Elizabeth, Lizzy Magie’s original game had not one, but two sets of rules to choose from.

One was called “Prosperity”, where every player won money anytime another gained a property. And the game was won by everyone playing only when the person with the least doubled their resources. A game of collaboration and social good.

The second set of rules was called “Monopoly”, where players succeeded by taking properties and rent from those with less luck rolling the dice. The winner was the person who used their power to eliminate everyone else.

Lizzy Magie’s mission was to teach us how different we feel when playing Prosperity vs Monopoly, hoping that it would one day change national policies.

When the Parker Bros adopted the game, they erased Lizzy Magie, they erased the “Prosperity” rules, and celebrated “Monopoly”. What they couldn’t erase was Lizzy’s lesson.

Source of this information (and more articles with backgrounds) landlordsgame.info

Inspired by a Facebook Post from “Women Hold Up Half the Sky”.

Capitalism or Socialism

The comments beneath my viral story are often from left-wing socialists. But also from right-wing capitalists who defend their (often very masculine I must say) views.

What most people don’t understand is that I’m not a capitalist nor a socialist. I’m a planetarist.

There is a third way. The planet’s way of abundance. This way can be combined with capitalism or with socialism and with everything in between. And the best of it is that when we understand our planet’s rules, we can easily be sustainable too.

Complexity is navigated with simplicity.

We can have a small government with little bureaucracy. And we can make everything cheaper, fairer, and more effective. With abundance for humans and for other living beings. With full autonomy. And full responsibility.

Just living our best lives whatever way we choose.

Combining ecology with the economy is so cool!

Results of Viral Story

The story was posted on April 16, a Saturday. Not a very popular day for LinkedIn. So, that shows the relativity of posting on certain days or certain hours. To be honest, I can’t be bothered. I don’t strategize, I just post everything intuitively at the moment it wants to be posted.

Synchronicity will do the rest when the world is ready for my words.

The post has 700,000 views and counting.

5,700 likes and 660 shares.

And many, many comments which I like back. And often answer.

My connection requests go through the roof now. And I have gained hundreds of extra followers.

Great result. I just love it! It broadens my tribe for my next stories. It helps me reach people with my book and essays later this year. And it gives me personal messages from people who want to collaborate.

Of course, I don’t say yes to all of them. Don’t be silly! I’m not a pleaser, impressed by so-called successful other people. I have my own compass. And I go with my intuition here again too. If I would say yes to even half of the talks people want to have with me in person, I wouldn’t be able to balance my money, time, and freedom.

So, I save my valuable time for the ones I know better. The ones I have more than one superficial conversation with. The loyal ones. My friends…

You know me by now, I value my time and freedom more than anything else. No money can buy me love, fun with my friends, or me-time in the sea.

Once a mermaid, always a mermaid…

And I’ll write more soon about LinkedIn and why it is such an important platform for writer entrepreneurs. It’s the best platform out there right now. Along with Tiktok.

Thank you, Mike, for adding your wise energy to my words on Abundanism. Systemic Design for a good future, and Wild Writing. © Désirée Driesenaar, 2022