I think there's another aspect here that the author is missing: break expectations, but do it in a way that confirms existing biases.<p>It's not just "this thing people believe is wrong", but "this thing people believe is wrong, <i>but you were never one of those people, were you? you and me, we're more clever than that</i>". breaking expectations in a way that makes people feel stupid for having those expectations in the first place isn't going to win you an audience.<p>- snowboarding with the NYPD: haven't you always wanted the roads to be shut down for everybody else, and you were the only one allowed on them?<p>- Bike Lanes: authority figure doing something stupid, gets called out for it. everybody's got a bit of an anti-authority streak and can sympathise with this<p>- Make it Count. spend a big company's money on your personal travel? who wouldn't want to do that.<p>- Bike thief: it's easy to see how viewers would like to feel they'd be better than all the people who ignored the "bike theives"<p>- iPod’s Dirty Secret: doesn't everybody wish their electronics lasted longer, and harbor a suspicion that the big rich tech companies are ripping them off?
There is another thing Neistat likes to portray in his video that I think makes him even more popular: The illusion of amateur.<p>His videos seems like they can be shot by anyone. But try skateboarding in the middle of a busy New York street with cars going in both directions while holding a heavy tripod camera on one hand, a remote on the other, and talking to the camera and saying hi to fans on the street, and finishing that narrative you started two miles ago all at the same time.
I think the author and commenters here are missing something. To make something viral, you have to make it addictive. To make it addictive, you have to make it rewarding. To make it more rewarding than the rest of the competition, you have to make it unique.<p>The fact that he's "breaking expectations" is what makes his content unique. What makes it REWARDING to watch is that it allows viewers to live vicariously in situations that they would never have the guts (for lack of a better word) to do themselves. Defying the NYPD. Proving the cops wrong. Sticking it to a big corporation like Nike. Being a thief and getting away with it. Again...sticking it to big corporations - Apple. Have you noticed that every one of these gets one over on the entities that most people feel keep them down? Nothing is more rewarding than winning, and his content lets people vicariously feel what it's like to win over the thing that they really hate. They thing that they subconsciously blame for all of their problems. The authority. The man.<p>This is what the author has completely missed. I could make a video where I turn on a light switch but instead the radio turns on. That breaks expectation, but it is not rewarding. If you want the viewer's reward system to fire, you need to engage their mirror neurons. You have the let them see you doing something they wish they could do. You have to get them to feel reward that they find missing in their lives. THAT is the real key to viral videos.
"How to Casey Neistadt a VLOG" by Sara Dietschy.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVC6WO_SEmw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVC6WO_SEmw</a>
The strategy is simple to put into words, but it is still extremely difficult to implement into practice. If it were simple to put into practice, then Neistat would not be distinguishing himself from others.
Not only that but Casey is also a great story teller, filmmaker and editor, they way he makes his videos are incredible. He makes mundane things look cool.
A while back I would run affiliate offers of different variety on Facebook and I discovered something interesting. A lot of times it wasn’t about a particular spin on the subject you are trying to promote, and more about how many people like and share your comment at a continuous rate. My suspicion is that it takes a few special accounts to share content with a few more special accounts and do this just enough times for things to go viral. What do I mean by special? Accounts which have friends/followers with the same mindset who are likely to also share the content. It’s like going out in the forest and walking into 5 spider webs in a row to get really pissed. It takes a consecutive successful event chain to trigger a viral reaction.<p>I put this theory to the test by promoting the same exact affiliate message under the guise of some fun content several times over the course of the week, at different times of the day. Results were almost predictable. One message might go viral if shared at a time when more people were sharing as initial “seeders” (basically your content is shared quickly at first). Another exactly the same message would not take off when the seed rate was too slow (likely due to uninterested people who were shared to from likeminded people). I could get 2 out of 5 identical messages to go viral given a fast seed rate with some luck.
There's a great deal of luck involved. Casey is a curious case of someone who is not interesting, deep, gifted or talented at anything, and yet has a massive audience.<p>With Casey, he was doing online video, when so few people were, that anything could become a smash hit. His other hits have to do with him already being an established name.<p>It is not unlike Dan Bilzerian - except Dan openly admits he got very lucky to end up where he is at, and so there aren't articles being written on how to become the next Dan or use his 'poker strategy', or maybe there are, I wouldn't be surprised :)
> We as a company should always grow. How about instead we start firing customers?<p>Joking aside, I actually do this...<p>We will sometimes have irrational customers and they DO impact our bottom line.<p>If you have customers that constantly waste your time, ask for refunds for insane reasons, complain about features you don't have and never promised to implement - just fire them.<p>This is one of the reasons Terms of Service exist as well. Sometimes you have a customer who tries to do something evil and you just have to fire them.
Virality seems to be correlated with things that evoke emotions. Breaking expectations can trigger emotions such as awe, shock, curiosity and anger. Other things go viral too, such as things that make us laugh or make us feel happy. To focus on just breaking expectations is missing the point.
Are people so obsessed with monetary success that they'll sacrifice the joy of programming and computer science to watch Casey Neistat's vlog four times in a row? I guess my priorities are totally out of order.<p>I personally loathe sleazy marketing and the burlesque tonic people like Neistat feed to the public. It's an embarrassment that his name makes it to the front page of HN, when the post about XDP I was reading early today still has half the points. We're completely obsessed with the wrong things.