The Viral Video Manifesto: Why Everything You Know is Wrong and How to Do What Really Works
by Stephen Voltz, Fritz Grobe
RULE ONEBe True
The guy swallowing swords, the guy eatingfire, the guy hammering a nail into his nose;it hit me that these were not tricks.
—TODD ROBBINS, SIDESHOW PERFORMER
We crave true, authentic experiences. Television and movies give us prepackaged retellings of life—entertaining, but unreal. The Internet, on the other hand, can give us unfiltered reality as no other medium can. The kid whose brother bites his finger and the news reporter who falls out of a vat of grapes: these are real. They’re true. And that truth helps make them contagious.
The most contagious online content provokes strong, active, positive emotions. Being true helps create and turn up the volume on that emotional connection.
At its best, this twenty-first-century sideshow ...
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