Thursday, September 18, 2008

The Popularity Cycle

ah, the weekend is here again. this week was relatively short.. or slack? haha. lectures all the way more or less. some PT in the morning.. frisbee.. soccer.. nothing very shiong. i <3 my unit.

anyway, ive been thinking about this interesting concept of mine called 'The Popularity Cycle'.
It's not really an original theory, but rather a common-sense logic thing, which nonetheless has amused me.

My theory is that once you get popular, you will remain popular, due to a chain of events that inevitably keeps you popular.

Sounds confusing? Let me give you an example - celeb bloggers e.g. Xiaxue.
Ok, i've nothing against her and i do visit her blog often, but she's a classic example of the popularity cycle.
She rose to fame several years ago, when she made many controversial blog entries that led to widespread discussion. Some of these include topics such as handicapped toilets usage, KL being unsafe, etc.

Then because she is popular, more people heard about her, and began to visit her blog (thus stimulating the hits on her page) . Newspapers featured her, forums talked about her, all because she was popular before, and this subsequently led to a continued rise in popularity, even when she wasnt making any significant posts. Hence the cycle.


Another example would be my Mario video , which started becoming popular because i posted it in a forums and people started talking about it. (not to mention my shameless advertising of it :p )
Then BECAUSE it was made known, the chain effect began, and people started telling other people about it. My video was even posted on several forums which i have never heard on (which also generate the most hits) and the chain effect continued.

Can you see? it became more popular precisely because it was popular. such a cycle! that now my video which isn't even THAT interesting gets views everyday and a comment every 2 days. it even beats danchoo's top viewed video, when my video was posted after his had already generated over 50k views.

The wonderful thing is -- i aint doing a thing! it's not like i'm making continuous edits or improvements to the video. it just keeps being viewed for some reason.


alright, that was a whole lot of ranting about a small thing. but it does teach me how to get famous - it's like starting a fire. i just need somethign to kickstart my fame, find the right spark, and then i just have to fan the fire, to keep it going with the wonderful Popularity Cycle.

Who wants to let me save him from a falling building/tree/pole/tallheavyscaryobject?