Working on a content platform gives you a front-row seat to a strange lottery: two posts of similar quality go out, one dies quietly, the other takes off. The closest thing I’ve found to an explanation is valence — the emotional charge a piece of content carries, whether positive, negative or neutral.
Positive, negative, neutral#
Positive-valence content makes people feel good: heartwarming stories, dumb memes, uplifting news. It gets shared because passing it on is a small gift, a break from the daily grind. What surprised me more is how well negative valence performs. Anger, sadness and disgust are powerful sharing engines — people pass along stories about injustice, controversial figures or societal problems to raise awareness, or to rally others to their side. Then there’s neutral content, which doesn’t stir much feeling but earns shares on pure value: a genuinely fascinating fact, a new discovery, a tutorial that solves a real problem.
Intensity is what travels#
The pattern that holds across all of it: the stronger the emotion, the more likely people are to comment, like or share. A mildly pleasant post loses to an infuriating one almost every time. Whether that says anything flattering about us is a separate question.
What tends to take off#
A few kinds of content start with an advantage. Debatable ideas, because people share to agree or to object, and polarising topics gain traction fast. Humour that leans on shared experience — the inside joke a whole community gets at once. Human-interest stories about ordinary people getting through hard things. Anything riding a trending topic with a genuinely fresh angle rather than a reheated take. And interactive formats — quizzes, polls, challenges — because participating is already halfway to sharing.
None of this adds up to a formula, and I’m suspicious of anyone selling one. But if I had to bet on a single variable, it’s this: content that makes people feel something strongly beats content that doesn’t, week after week.