Jim KwikFounder, Kwik Brain · Brain Coach

What the most VIRAL articles have in common 👀

4 Jul 2023 · 1 min

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In this short talk, Jim Kwik examines the New York Times' most‑emailed (viral) articles, noting that the newspaper classifies these pieces by the primary emotion they evoke. The analysis reveals that anger is the top‑ranked emotion, boosting an article’s virality by 34%. Kwik argues that because anger drives clicks, shares, comments, and ultimately revenue, social‑media algorithms prioritize anger‑inducing, extreme viewpoints over balanced, reasonable perspectives, creating a feedback loop that rewards sensationalism.

Chapters

The most viral articles in the New York Times, and they looked at the most emailed list. This is the list you want to be on if you're a writer at the New York Times. And they classified the articles by emotion to see if there were any patterns. And there were. Number 1 was anger. Anger increased virality by 34%. In other words, if someone were to read an article in the New York Times and that article caused that person to be angry, it was more likely to be read, watched, shared, commented on, widely distributed. So anger equals clicks and revenue. Unfortunately, this is the way the algorithms work in social media, and that doesn't really reward having a balanced, reasonable point of view. It rewards extreme points of view that incite anger.