[brudgers]

The content is what I appreciate about content I appreciate.

What grabs my attention is entirely different…a combination of “the algorithm,” “the author,” “the clickbait,” and my mood/current interest.

What keeps me coming back is the author and my mood. A para-social relationship. At the general scale of viral, almost nothing viral gets my sustained interest…I mean I am here on HN after all.

But for clarification, I appreciate a lot of things I don’t enjoy or like. Something can be both good and not for me…indeed, I am not the audience for most good things.

And that’s the thing. Things go viral with an audience. Virality is a relationship to a specific audience not an inherent property of the text/content/artifact.

If you want to make something viral either make something tuned for a specific audience or make something and let it find its audience. In either case you have to make something.