Can You Film Me Squatting? I’m trying to go viral here…

Do you ever see a video show up on your timeline with a seemingly infinite amount of like, comments, and shares and you think to yourself… of all things, how did THIS video get so popular?? Viral videos are spreading quicker than chicken pox in a kindergarten classroom yet it seems there just might be a method to the madness.

To get started, I googled “viral” and you will not believe what I found. Merriam-Webster has the following definitions:

viral  /ˈvīrəl/  adjective

1. of the nature of, caused by, or relating to a virus or viruses.
2. relating to or involving an image, video, piece of information, etc., that is circulated rapidly and widely from one Internet user to another.

*insert shook face here* Do you SEE the second definition?? How long you think that’s been there? You think pictures drawn on the inside of cave walls back in the day ever went viral? Yeah, me neither.

Anyways, now that we know what ~viral~ means, let’s learn HOW to become viral ourselves. According to a New Yorker article by Maria Konnikova titled, “The Six Things That Make Stories Go Viral Will Amaze, and Maybe Infuriate, You,” the most common traits of viral videos are that they provoke an emotional response (positive response is best), they provoke some sort of arousal, they are memory-inducing, they have a social currency, they are a quality source of media, and they have practical value. If you reflect back on the videos you are most likely to share on social media, do they have many of these qualities? I know mine do…

Unlike the New Yorker article which is backed up by relevant research, there are lots and LOTS of sites teaching you “how to go viral” that might not be as credible as you think. An example is an article titled, “How to Make a Viral Fitness Video,” which recommended the following tips: keep the basics in check, consistency is key, credit yourself, and capitalize on the moment. I don’t know about you, but to me these traits don’t sound extremely provoking or emotion-inducing like we would expect. Do fitness videos differ that much from your “typical” viral video? Although a fitness video potentially has a smaller target audience, I think sticking with the previously mentioned six traits can take your lifting video to the next level instead of just posting the same thing all the other 48302jdfewjd08r5w843 “fitness bloggers” post everyday. 🙂

Another take on ~viral~ content comes from Mr. Kevin Allocca, a YouTube trends manager (he literally watches YouTube videos for a living… I think I went to the wrong school)…

According to Mr. Allocca, viral videos happen because of three things:

1. tastemakers
2. communities of participation
3. unexpectedness

He brings up a good argument for why videos go viral with even BETTER examples – watch it, it’s funny. My personal favorite is the clip with the cyclist talking about how typical it is for obstructions to be in bike lanes as he continually runs into them (5:38 if you’re not going to watch the whole thing *eye-roll*). Nobody who starts watching that video with no previous knowledge of what happens would have predicted his funny and maybe painful actions. Because of this, people want to share it to share the shock they ~felt~ when first watching it.

The word ~felt~ takes us back to those things called feelings which was the number one trait of a viral video… we went full circle if ya didn’t notice. So whether you share a video because of the emotions you feel when you watch it or whether you really just want to show off that grainy, poor quality video of your new PR, keep in mind what makes something viral and you might just become as popular as this lady with her wine weights. Cheers.

*Lifting* Observations & Expectations

Challenges can be fun, right? WNYC, a New York public radio station, released a challenge that would make most millennials cringe, titled “Bored and Brilliant.” It consists of six daily challenges that get our minds off of our cell phones and into the real world. After skimming through the options to find the one I wanted to attempt to tackle, I found myself laughing at some of the challenges. A “Photo Free Day”? If you think I’m giving up my snap streaks then think again… Delete my favorite app? Absolutely not… Post an away message? I haven’t done that since my AIM days… After all these rejections to the challenges, I realized I may need these more than I thought…

I finally settled on the Bored and Brilliant Challenge 5: One Small Observation. A guest on the show mentioned how different his cab rides were after the iPhone was invented since he now spends most of his time staring at his phone versus staring at the world around him. The audio clip encouraged me to get into a creative mindset by going somewhere public to watch people and to let my mind wander and notice things. I decided to take this challenge to a place that is easy to let your mind wander… the gym. I tried to pay particular attention to peoples actions around me and even learned a little bit about myself along the way. I noticed that, like myself, people often have little routines they do (maybe without even realizing it) before they start a lift. I know that I always wiggle my foot a certain way before getting my weight off the squat rack and observing others I saw particular steps taken, specific breathing patterns, and even certain twitches that some people made to start their lifts as well. For me, this challenge pushed me to stay off my phone between sets which is something I struggle with on a daily basis.

Sadly, I’m not the only one who’s so addicted to their phone that they use it WHILE working out. It really is harder than some might think, though, to keep our phones out of our hands while working out. A New York Times article titled, “Cellphones Test Strength of Gym Rules,” discusses some of the different views regarding cellphones being allowed or not allowed in the gym. Personally, I use my phone to track my weight as soon as I get into the gym, throughout my workout because I have workouts apps on it, and then even ~more~ throughout my workout to send texts, tweets, you name it, between sets of my workout… but is that “wrong”? According to the article, cellphones are typically banned in gyms to prevent annoying surrounding customers by speaking loudly on the phone, sitting on equipment while not using it, etc. So, to me, I think using my cellphone while working out is perfectly fine. Would my workouts potentially go faster if I didn’t use my phone? Probably. But I enjoy staying connected, changing my music when a dull song comes on, and even staying up to date on the latest snap stories during a good lift.

Whether you spend too much time on your phone because of work or (the lesser) social media, we all deserve a break from it to let our minds ~wander~. Spending more time mindlessly taking in the beauty around you and less time stressing over how many likes your last tweet got, (see where your anxiety is really coming from here) could help your brain feel different in a good way. Happy mind-wandering!

Out with the old [likes] & in with the new [comments]

Want to know what would be cool? If you commented on this post after you’re done reading it… 🙂 Why, you ask? Personally, I like hearing how people agree/disagree with my point of view on different subjects (especially since only about 0.0000007% of the population will ever see this post anyways), but not everyone is feelin’ the same way. NPR, for example, announced their speedy removal of comments from their journalism sections in this article. They decided to “rely on social media to pick up the slack” which, to me, sounds like taking a problem and just transporting it elsewhere versus resolving it, but what do I know, right?? Anyways, their decision came from a result of many concerns such as discovering most of their comments were coming from just a handful of site users and that a lot of the comments recommended removing this privilege to comment (so ironic) because of the chaos they were causing on the web. Regardless of what pushed NPR over the edge to cut off comments altogether, let’s agree to disagree with them…

Comments… are a wonderful thing. Lots of comments make your post more interactive and therefore more popular. Lately, I have noticed more and more fitness accounts asking questions in their captions just so that viewers feel they NEED to comment on their post. Although a comment is… just a comment, I don’t think the typical instagrammer realizes how helpful those really are to the owner of the account. An ~awesome~ and extremely long infographic found here describes “the evolution of social media influencers” and just how important getting your page on as many peoples profiles as possible is. It’s worth the read because it really details how we made that transition from Hollywood celebrities being the desired advertiser to accounts with smaller reaches but more personal and interactive users following it.

Continuing on with the “we {heart} comments” theme, let’s look at another example where adding comments paid off big time for one particular artist. In an article posted here on Forbes, Richard Prince sold “works of art” AKA other peoples insta pics with new captions and comments for BIG bucks. Unsurprisingly, the people who’s pics he used are revolting, but the awkward thing is that no one really knows if it’s ~actually~ stealing or not. Weird.

Thankfully, social media is adapting to the times (does it feel like social media is always one step ahead of us??) and insta now gives you the option to toggle on and off if you want your followers to be able to comment on your pics or not. I keep comments on because I enjoy seeing people’s reaction to my posts but keep in mind when you’re commenting on other posts to keep it respectful… don’t be THAT GUY.

Lucrative Likes

Let’s look at Instagram. In its simplest form. Before the updates. Remember when you could only post ONE photo? No multiple photo posts, no boomerangs, and definitely no videos…  Well, times have changed, my friends, and you better be adapting like the rest of the world already has…

Have you ever scrolled through your Instagram and noticed how all the different pictures oddly all start to look the same? Every girl posing the same way in her off-the-shoulder crop top? Every group of guys posing the same “for the boys”? The same expressions being picked up and used EVERYWHERE? You’re not the only one who’s noticed and it’s the spilled into fitness social media accounts as well.

Larry Lessig discusses the idea of combining other peoples work to create something different and new and although no one can really claim the duck face is solely their doing, I think the ideology can still apply. Lessig explains, “The critical point to recognize is that the RW creativity does not compete with or weaken the market for the creative work that gets remixed.” To me, fitness accounts can easily be targeted as being avid users of remixing. The poses, the facial expressions, the use of way too many emojis in their caption, and even the products that every single one of them seems to just love.

Beyond the actual images and videos that your eyes are seeing on the feed is a whole other kind of remixing I like to call Photoshop. An article posted on MSN.com sheds light on just how much editing goes into perfect posts by highlighting fitness blogger Karina Irby and the side-by-side photos she posted before and after editing. 10 edits were made, (and I’m not talking about adding a filter) like smoothing skin, thinning arms, toning the stomach etc. See the remixing happening? No longer are we in the moment, snapping a photo, and posting it immediately to share with those important to us. Instagram for fitness gurus has now become a challenge to create the most “natural” yet perfectly sculpted photo or video to reach as many people as possible (and go viral).

Although the edits may be obvious and obnoxious to some, it’s still W O R K I N G. The activity on fitness posts is absolutely soaring… so much that some are even quitting their full time jobs to focus more on their blogs and less on, you know, like, a full-time salary. A Fashionista article titled “The Business of Being a Fitness Influencer” goes in-depth into many women’s journeys into the fitness world.  From accountants to engineers, they’ve proved it’s possible to make posting photos onto social media into a lucrative career. Whether a typical fitness post that shows up on my TL is a remix of many others trending ideas and edits and poses, or is something truly unique, it’s heartwarming to know that if my engineering career doesn’t work out, I can make a living posting over-edited photos of me at the gym. 😉

Addicted to Lifting or Likes?

Out with the old and in with the new. Are personal trainers (the ones you actually go see at your gym) being tossed aside? It sure seems like it. With such a heavy presence of “fitness gurus” on social media, it’s easy to forget the fees and social interaction and just hop on insta, search: #bootyworkout, and get to work, right? According to Professor Andrea Lunsford from Stanford University, “Good writing changes something, it doesn’t just sit on the page. It gets up, walks off the page and changes something.” Sound familiar? Yes, I’m referencing the motivational novels written beneath your favorite fitness insta star’s sweaty, yet perfectly posed gym selfie. There are endless accounts to show you transformations, gym routines, dieting plans, and endless photo shopped pics showing off muscles you didn’t even know existed… but how did this trend catch on so quickly? I think the idea of “she can do it so why can’t I” would be the biggest motivator. Snapping a few videos and photos during a workout is pretty easy (and awkward) and for some it has really paid off but not so much for those NOT receiving millions of likes per day. Sadly, the transformation from couch to gym is not so easy and the way our generation is attached to our phones isn’t helping either. A study done at the University of Pittsburgh claims, “Too much time on sites like Twitter, Snapchat, Reddit, and Tumblr may elicit feelings of envy and the distorted belief that others lead happier and more successful lives.” I’m not saying that these avid instagrammers are posting just to make others feel inferior but I definitely think it is having that adverse effect. This study that claims the amount of time we spend on social media relates to our overall sense of happiness seems to contradict with the idea that we now write to change something like Andrea Lunsford suggested. Could we be overdoing the idea that our writing NEEDS to change something? Whether the fitness guru posts for their own satisfaction of improving their lifting or whether its merely to gain more likes and climb the insta ladder, these fitness posts are affecting their viewers in more ways than they probably ever thought possible.

ThisInsider.com posted an article describing “the dark side of Instagram” earlier this year about a young woman who started following a workout plan she found on Instagram. Soon after she started, she became obsessed… “I would panic every time I would eat bad food, and I would get bloated. And I would look at all of these posts on Instagram and be like, how do I not have these six pack abs?” Sadly, this is not an isolated instance. Scrolling through picture after picture of people appearing to live “perfect lives” with “perfect bodies” can be hard. Because of this, I fully support having that social interaction, seeing the personal trainer in the gym, and staying motivated with people that aren’t just a face on a screen made pretty by an overused filter.