Going absolutely mega viral

and going completely unnoticed at the same time

For the first time in over two weeks, it was sunny outside. The skies were bright, the air was clean, and the temperature was rising. So I decided to invite a few friends to lunch—proposing that after, we spend the day swimming at the natural springs, near the center of town. As it turns out, a few other people had that same idea.

When we arrived, we were greeted by thousands of barely clothed bodies, sizzling in the Texas sun. I looked to my friends and asked in a hushed voice—How is it that so many people in Austin are free on a Tuesday afternoon to sit around and do nothing? They shrugged. I shrugged.

I recently moved to Austin, so I’m still constantly in awe of this city. It’s weird, and playful, and welcoming, and—in so many ways—conspiring to make my life as wonderful as possible. So I decided to chalk today up as another one of those quirky things that makes me scratch my head about this place.

Then, on a whim—as one does in 2024—I decided to document the occasion and share it online.

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II.

Earlier that same day, I documented something else online.

After two months of work, I finally published the best essay I’ve ever written. It’s a piece about how to reorient your life, when you feel uncertain and doubtful of the road ahead. It was the byproduct of countless conversations, and decades of questioning my own path through life. I was—and still am—immensely proud of the piece. So I let Twitter know as much.

I took a screenshot of the headline of the essay, and wrote a simple caption. I noted how this was my favorite thing I’ve ever written, and then sent it. My hope was that, those who were already familiar with my work would give it a read.

But things rarely happen just the way we hope.

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III.

As a writer, I’ve often found myself in a panic. Scrambling the night before a due date. Completely unprepared. Staring at a blank page. In that situation, I usually start searching through my notes—desperately trying to Frankenstein together a few disjointed pre-written passages into something readable. Hoping that somehow, they magically coalesce into a single coherent idea. I always wince before releasing those essays to the world.

And yet, the outcome is always the same.

With the rushed essays, the frantic and seemingly ill-conceived ones—people always love them. And worse, they spread like wildfire.

I’ve been publishing my writing online for nearly three years now, and the most interesting lesson I’ve learned is that you can never predict what is going to resonate with people. In fact, when I speak to writer friends about this, there’s a sentiment that’s universally echoed. It’s that, when you create something new—there’s actually an inverse relationship between what you love writing, and how popular it becomes.

Your best stuff will never be seen.

Your worst stuff will be shared around the world.

Up is down, left is tuna fish.

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IV.

So you’ve probably guessed how this week turned out for me. Maybe you’ve even seen the tweet from my day at the springs. That tweet was viewed over 26 million times. It was liked by Elon Musk, and reposted by Tim Ferriss. It will remain—for the rest of my life—the most widely seen thing I’ve ever created¹. A spur of the moment thought. A shot from the hip.

Now, what of the essay I spent months working on? The one that is nuanced, and meaningful, and was written to help people find their way through the dark patches of life? Well, suffice it to say, far fewer people saw it and even fewer people actually read it.

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V.

So if you’ve been contemplating creating new things, or putting your thoughts out into the world—I urge you to do so. You probably have some really beautiful stories to tell. But I want to warn you, that nothing about creativity makes sense. The things that are closest to your heart will not necessarily resonate with others. And will certainly not ignite a wildfire of attention.

Which suggests a few things.

The first is, if you’re going to do this, you have to do it for you. You have to get something else out of this other than attention. Because the attention, in and of itself, is so meaningless. My life is in no way better or more meaningful after this past week.

Second is, you can’t over-identify with the results of your work. Because results alone are not a reliable indicator that you are doing good work ². Having had a taste, I could continue to seek virality—in fact, many of my friends have urged me to do so. But the actions I would have to take, and the things I would have to write, would probably make me hate myself and my work. Which doesn’t seem like a worthwhile tradeoff, if you ask me.

It would be easy to double the size of this newsletter overnight if I decided to write about drama, or controversy, or salacious news. But I don’t want to be that kind of person, and that’s not the kind of writing that makes me feel like I’m creating something of meaning.

What I haven’t told you yet is that two days after I published my essay entitled How to be Happy, someone reached out to me with this message:

“Zac, this is the best piece you've ever written. I have now read it 3 times, once being out loud to my wife who was also very moved by it and asked me to forward it to her as well…

Thank you for writing this, it came at an important time in my life as I think about what's next for me and have been feeling quite lost.”

This is why I write. This message right here.

Do I have all the answers? Hell no, I don’t even have most of them. Instead, I use writing as a medium to clarify my thoughts, and build my worldview, in public. Through this process, I’m bound to unearth some ideas that can be genuinely helpful to myself and others. It’s not sexy, or polarizing, or anger-inducing—and therefore, has little capacity to spread.

But it has an unlimited capacity to go deep.

So it seems like, if you want to do anything creative, you have a choice to make. Will you do what you need to do—stoking the emotions of the mob—to reach millions of people? Or will you create things that you love, regardless of outcome, on the off chance that you receive a single meaningful message.

I know which one I choose.

—Zac

PS. If you’ve made it all the way down here and don’t feel that you’ve just wasted five minutes, consider hitting the like button on this essay.

It helps others find it, and it makes me happy!

1. Why do I think that tweet went so viral?

There are a few factors. The first is that, my opinion is ambiguous. You never really know if I’m condoning it or condemning it. Which means you can agree, or disagree with me, and still be right. You can be on “my side”, or fight my ignorance.

The second is that, this post is what I’m calling a base meme. Meaning that, it’s just a canvas in which memesters can project their own spin or flavor on top of. The post itself is very bland when you really look at it.

Third is that, it taps into a pain in the zeitgeist right now. Unemployment, work ethic, interest rates, tech lay-offs, all of these things underpin the context of this tweet. In this way, someone seeing this can approach this post from any of those angles.

Fourth is, it’s a paradox. People are unemployed, and struggling to make ends meet, and they see a park full of people not working. The nature of this post poses a question that is begging you to answer it. How is this possible? It it even true? Although, I did not write the post asking for your opinion, everyone thought it was the perfect time to provide it.

2. I would consider good work as the kind of work that is in line with your Virtue. Which I can best describe as: A quality of the human condition that you would like to see improved or spread throughout the world. There is no goodness in gaming metrics, and getting views for views’ sake.