#226 — DEAD OR ALIVE

Social Media and the Art of Willful Ignorance

You cannot be successful without an audience. It’s obvious, but many people (poets, for example) pretend to forget about it and keep writing poems nobody reads while complaining nobody reads them.

There are different ways to maximize your audience, but according to data from the Institute for Social Media Research, the best way to do so on platforms like TikTok, X (Twitter), or Instagram is to use the art of willful ignorance.

From a graphical perspective, willful ignorance is a mathematical object called an inflection point on the social media graph of your posts.

Depending on the political orientation of the social media guru describing the concept, these points are called the “Intelligent Enough to Look Credible Point” or the “Dumb But Not Too Dumb Threshold.”

Data scientists working for the big social media platform specifically train their algorithms to look for these. (The H20 Python module is currently the most popular, but it’s a fast-moving environment where innovations appear almost weekly.)

If you master the willful ignorance concept, you will master engagement on your posts, no matter the platform of your choice. Readers or viewers reach peak engagement at this inflection point because they can’t resist the bait. (According to socio-psychological studies, less than 4% of the population can.)

Expect three forms of engagement on your posts at the inflection point. People will:

• Correct your claim,
• Tell you how dumb you are,
• Make “clever” jokes about your stupid claim.

It’s hard to get it right because if your content is too dumb, people will treat it as fake and won’t engage. And if your content is too subtle, you will lose a big chunk of your audience.

On average, you should aim for a level of idiocy a bit dumber than you would think necessary because people consume social media as entertainment and aren’t focused when doing so. In other words, people are dumber than average when using social media.

The Dumb But Not Too Dumb point is where viral posts happen

In the best-case scenario, all three commenter types will interact together.

• The first one will tell you how dumb you are.
• Another will reply, saying it was satire and that the first commenter is the dumb one.
• And a third one will arrive to explain that, anyway, you had an interesting point, and it should be noted that — in very specific cases nobody has ever heard of — the initial point could be considered true.

The more pedantic the third commenter, the better. According to previously mentioned data from the Institute for Social Media Research, there’s a strong correlation between the commenters’ pedantry and the chance of your post becoming viral.

Of course, willful ignorance isn’t the only way to become viral

Polarizing and one-sided takes are also very successful. While many people recommend insulting opponents to make a polarizing opinion successful, I recommend using the concept of willful ignorance to achieve a more subtle polarizing bait.

Instead of insulting your opponents, willfully pretend they don’t exist. You can be sure many of them will show up to tell you how wrong you are.

I hope you liked this social media lesson, and I invite you to try it on your favorite platform. Feel free to share your results in the comments — I’m always happy to see my readers succeed.

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