People Didn't Like My Last Post - What Went Wrong? Nothing.
The Psychology Of "Likes" - Boo, Boo - No-One Likes You
My last post was not liked much at all, to my great surprise. What went wrong?
Maybe the title? It was published just before dinner.
And I was so confident.
In the intro, I wrote:
I thought I was done spending days researching and writing for the common good but this is simply too important to ignore. If this article doesn’t go at least moderately viral, I am either “reach censored”, people don’t get it, or people get it but have given up. Let’s find out.
Well, it was pretty much a flop. And I don’t know why. Despite heavily promoting it, the stats are below average.
And I didn’t find out why either.
Maybe using “shit” in the headline is a bad idea.
Not even my most loyal readers liked it very much. I did not even get “likes” for effort. Or sympathy. Or to keep me going.
It took about 14 hours to get even one “like”. That is unheard of. I have at least two hard-core fans who like everything I write - not because they like everything I write - but because they like me. (God bless them).
How do I know?
They like my posts even without reading them. I often post long articles. I frequently get likes one minute after posting articles that take 20 min to read. I call them “me likes”. Ego loves them.
Unless they are bots - that would be paranoid conspirational thinking and I am not yet going down that rabbit hole.
I give “sympathy likes” to writers I like all the time. I open, and read the first paragraph, I am not interested but still “like” it out of courtesy and to say thanks for the often unpaid effort.
I published over a hundred articles. The first ones only had a few dozen readers. I always got at least two or three likes within the first few hours.
With this one, however, nothing, nada, niente, nix.
Not one like for the first five or six hours. I noticed that over a hundred people opened the emails but no likes. Then, slightly paranoid, I went to bed. Next morning, about 14 hours after publishing I had one like.
ONE LIKE !?!?!?
I found that very odd.
As a writer on Substack, you usually know when you write something decent, especially after publishing more than 100 articles. I write a lot of wacky, specialized stuff and know beforehand that it will hardly create more than five likes. That is not a problem for me.
I don’t aim for likes when I write. I would have shot myself by now if I made my self-esteem dependent on that.
Further, likes are more guaranteed for researched longer articles than opinion pieces. People appreciate the effort.
Further, I never had more readers and followers than now.
I very likely have a “saviour complex” and completely overestimate the quality and impact of my writings, granted. Some kind of delusional undiagnosed genius or prophet complex.
My family is gentle with me but they definitely think that.
Still, even then you get likes. I call them “wacky entertainment likes”. I even have one paying subscriber who specifically named the entertainment value of my “wackiness” as the sole reason he subscribed. I felt honoured.
And if all the above fails, after a few hours - you get at least one “feeling sorry for you not getting any likes - like.”
But in this case - everything failed. EVERYTHING!!!!
Paranoid me: Who is fucking with me? I tempted those surveillance fuckers with “reach censored” and they promptly did it. No idea how but no one is that unlikeable to get no “likes”. And so I went down the rabbit hole…..
But nothing that a hot spa and cup of white Kratom can’t fix.
The next morning I regained my stoic philosophical self and reassured myself: “Shit happens.”
Maybe people simply don’t want to hear about shit, especially around breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner and late-night snaking. Somebody is always eating somewhere.
There is also a chance that I underestimated my readers. Maybe everyone already knows all this shit and what it will lead to and stupid me just came late to the party.
Maybe I should use the word “shit” a little less? Maybe I should consult an online synonym tool.
Maybe, maybe, maybe…..
Or people are just tired of doomsday scenarios - no matter how compelling the evidence.
Yet, I find it odd that wastewater biosurveillance evokes so little interest. It is by far the most powerful tool they have to manipulate the public with minimal costs, oversight and transparency.
So I am not giving up.
On the extremely small chance that some surveillance fucker fucks with my stats to undermine my self-esteem I give you this:
I also noticed that a lot of questionable things are liked by millions of people: Trump, Biden, McDonald’s burgers, Taylor Swift……you know what I mean,
Long time ago I read something incredibly wise scribbled on the wall of a public toilet: “People - eat shit. Seven trillion flies can’t be wrong.”
If I look at Substack and see who is liked a lot, I rarely feel jealous these days.
Something must have gone wrong at my birth. Maybe I was dropped on my head. I am missing something most people have: Herd instinct.
Instead, I have a “get the fuck away from them” instinct.
They say there is safety in numbers and, watching nature documentaries from Africa, there is clearly some merit to that idea. A separated gazelle is easy prey for the lions.
But we are not in the wild. And we surely are no gazelles. (More like a bunch of castrated overweight hippos.)
Worse, actually.
What I see is a domesticated herd of sheep being herded towards the slaughterhouse. That’s when separation from the herd suddenly seems like a reasonable idea.
In these strange times of manipulated groupthink, not being liked for what you write tells me, that I am onto something.
So I will write down my truth to the last reader - possibly no reader, entertaining bots and censors only.
I will honour my “delusionary prophet” condition.
I will smoke in my Spa and remember Nietzsche who sold less than 500 books despite being well-connected and best buddy with famous composer Richard Wagner.
I will converse with Schopenhauer who tells me: “Get a dog and keep writing. Dogs are way ahead of humans.”
I will converse with Socrates who tells me: “You know nothing, fucker, so why do you care? Everyone talks shit. The best antidote to shit is shit.”
Recently a commenter in Notes observed: “Why do I get all excited when user “bellypop56fuckoff” likes me or not?”
Everything happens in the prison of our minds.
In that spirit, I do what I must do, as there really is no choice, and keep on blowing the apocalyptic shit horn so that it will all rain down on you and all illusions about the innocence of shit will be dispelled forever.
Only then will my mission be accomplished.
And if you fuckers don’t get it, future shit-stirrers certainly will.
Because shit is eternal. It might change form, shape and name - but its essence will not go away. If we don’t deal with shit now and oppress it, it will pop up in weird and the most unexpected places.
Enjoy your morning tea.
Not liking this just to fuck with you.
I like your writing because you reveal, with no filter, the deliberations of your mind. It makes us all feel less weird. Of course the fact that you always circle back to Love as the Omnipresent, benevolent force that we call God, also resonates with me. And finally, I also feel that coming to terms with our irrelevance is the key to liberation.
On the sewage piece. I feel less threatened because I don’t see how they’ll connect me to my poop unless they put a detection device on my house effluent outflow. Until they do that, it’s all mixed in with the community, and that group is in constant flux with visitors, etc.
I also feel they already have access to my phone, garbage, and all my other devices, so I figure the surveillance game is already lost.
In response to your question about managing society wide avarice, it would appear every construct to do so has failed. Religion, capitalism, Marxism, liberalism, all manipulated by the humans who reach the levers of power and will stop at nothing to accumulate more power/wealth. I think that as dysfunctional as democracy is, it’s beauty is that the people who dictate outcomes are also the ones who benefit or get fucked. So the long term incentives are in place, it just moves super slowly (generations?) before the Plebes are getting so screwed by the feudal lords that they do something about it. When your kids are sent off to die in Afghanistan or Vietnam, and your spouse dies from an experimental injection, and inflation eats up your retirement nest egg, and the TV no longer distracts you from your materialistic cage, maybe then you’ll finally get off your dyspeptic hippopotamus ass, do some Moving in Nature with Friends, and try to figure out the difference between what the politicians are saying and what they are doing, so you can vote with a modicum of intelligence greater than who you think looks and sounds good according to your best friend.
Only speaking for myself, but I haven't yet read your previous piece. I only read things within Substack and, maybe because I have been otherwise occupied, haven't come across it here yet.