I Followed Dr Mehmet Yildiz’ Advice On How To Go Viral

Here is what became of it

I recently came across an interesting article by Dr Mehmet Yildiz, the technologist, cognitive scientist, writing mentor, and editor of Illumination. The article is a frank and insightful analysis of patterns exhibited in viral articles during the last year, as well as a recipe of conclusive tips.

Dr Mehmet observed 8 patterns when poring over the pieces of 100 Medium pieces that went viral in 2021. He touches on things like an emotional and engaging tone, controversial subject matter, popular names or well known figures in the title, originality, unusual or attractive images, and a startling opening and finish.

Happily I had already recently scribbled an unpublished piece that was marinating on my Medium wall that seemed to fit Dr Mehmet’s formula perfectly. The piece was a timely, wicked little satirical poem, shown below.

For those who don’t know, an epistle is generally an open letter but can also be written in the form of a poem. They were popular in the golden age of satire, the age of Enlightenment, and were heavily used by poets like Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift to great effect.

Part of the reason I used the word Epistle in my title is that I appear to be the first writer on the planet to pen an Epistle To Rupert Murdoch: to the man who might arguably be the most influential and powerful man in the world, or, as President Biden recently called him, “the most dangerous man in the world.”

I published the piece on Illumination, who featured it on April 16th. I have withdrawn my epistle from Illumination last night for reasons I’ll explain later in this piece.

Now, I am an American expat living in Australia and have seen Murdoch, via weapons like Fox News and Sky News, torch the political landscape of both countries. Former Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, has recently ignited a Royal Commission style inquiry into Murdoch’s monopoly on Australian media after garnering over 500,000 signatures from citizens craving for a more balanced media landscape where its political leaders are not forced to kowtow to the Murdoch Empire just to get elected.

Murdoch has a history of stoking racial tensions, creating misinformation, denying global warming, even manipulating his viewership into doubting science and plain facts, whether it’s climate change or pandemics. He runs propaganda for the right wing, both in America and Australia.

So I thought, surely, this will be an issue most people are concerned about, right?

Right?

The internal views on Medium started out very slow, only getting to about 15 views after my first week, which is well below my average. I think the piece garnered about 4 fans. I’ve only been on Medium for a month now, so found myself getting paranoid and asking questions like, are readers and writers on Medium apolitical?

Or, has a culture of fear and paranoia even seeped into a platform of people who fearlessly write for a living?

Or, worse yet, has Murdoch’s influence infiltrated even the algorithm and curation system of Medium?

Then something bizarre happened. It started getting hits. 50 hits, 100 hits, 200 hits, in the span of 24 hours. Not just views, but reads. When I checked the details on my stats board, I had still only earned 26 cents from the piece. So I looked into it and found all of the hits were external views. How lucky for Medium! Here is the break down below.

I checked my Twitter account and was only belatedly notified of one person I didn’t even know or follow who shared my piece. When I checked where he got it from it led to another post of my piece that was shared without me even getting notified by Twitter, which had 3 likes and 4 retweets, all from people I neither knew or followed, all living in America.

Since I didn’t get notified for this tweet, were there others? I had a look at my Medium stats for further detail, and came across the following:

Some mysterious “android device” and google. I’m none the wiser. Who profits from this? Does Illumination earn revenue outside of Medium for its articles? I don’t blame them if they do, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t depressing that I received no profit for my own work. I believe Google profits from its searches. Anybody else?

I recently found out that Medium’s new upstart competitor, Simily, pays writers for both internal and external views. They basically pay 2 cents per view. So for this piece, instead of making a whopping 26 cents from Medium, I would have earned $5.36.

Before the next unforseen, unpredictable spike of external views of my Murdoch piece (who knows, the next rise could be in the thousands), I decided to remove it from Illumination. Not sure I will take it anywhere else, as I don’t want to get accused by Google of duplicating content. But it’s a lesson for future pieces.

Dr Mehmet wrote a very insightful article on going viral that I found inspiring and instructive. Unfortunately, in the case of my Murdoch epistle, his ingredients for success did not bear fruit among the Medium readership.

If you have a piece that meets Dr Mehmet’s criteria for going viral, make sure it is well within the parameters of the Medium social bubble. Anything that might catch fire with the rest of the world, you will not be paid for.

© Carlo Zeno 2022

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Thanks for reading. Thank you to Winston for inspiring me with his latest article on boldness, which helped me overcome my hesitation in submitting this piece.

For more of my work, check out two below, both published with Illumination. You can also buy me a coffee if want to add further support. Thank you!