[anigbrowl]

Not true. It has much more to do with timing - both time of day and submitting a post when the audience is receptive to it, not necessarily being the first to do so. I have been here a long and have relatively high karma; about 3/4 of my posts get no traction, some get a small amount of attention, some go to the front page and stay there all day. The posts that are most successful in terms of getting attention are often not the ones I think most deserving of it, eg scientific journal articles with the meatiest content usually fare poorly.

I've never asked anyone to boost a post and being a rather nati-social creature I don't have an audience of devoted fans, if anything the opposite. I could get more karma if I was selective about the time of day I posted (eg lunchtimes are usually good) but I just post stuff as I discover it.