And crows, too, for the plain sake of crowing

Me: Wow! Yeah, that sounds super real and plausible, I’m very intrigued 

Woman on the show: Luckily, my exorcist had the actual blood of St. Agnes to help him-

A pun post crossed my dash, and I reblogged it with an equally bad pun in return. A couple of my followers find it funny, it's a good day for everyone.

That was on July 7th.

Virality on Reddit was entirely algorithmic. You could garner a couple crossposts, but the success of a post was entirely dependent on whether or not it hit r/all--the main page of Reddit. If your post does that, it's immediately exposed to 10x the number of people and immediately gets upvoted.

On my pun post, I get a couple reblogs. And those reblogs get a couple reblogs--nobody really adds any content to the post, it just gets a couple reblogs here and there.

There's a specific chain of reblogs that I'd like to focus on. The most popular post on this chain has about 25 reblogs on it. Half the posts have three reblogs or fewer. Five posts in this chain have just one reblog total.

But the reblog chain keeps going. And going. It breaches containment many times over. And finally, after a chain THIRTY SIX posts long, at 9:30 AM, July 22nd this morning, it hits a popular account.

99% percent of the people who have seen the post--virtually unchanged from how it left my dash--have seen it because it was curated by 36 different people. That's insane to me.

None of those 36 people know that they're part of this chain. They saw a post, reblogged it, and moved on. If any one of these people had not reblogged, the post would have a fraction of the impact it has.

And yet, after two weeks, the post has effectively hit the main page of tumblr. It was picked up, only because people liked it enough to show it to their followers. There were no algorithms necessary.

update: it says nowhere that i cant post it here, so

“i baked you a cake

but i ate it

i'd give you my heart

but you'd take it

i'd give you the world

but i'd have nowhere to sit

can't give you a lot

but i'll spare just a bit

i won't say i love you

i don't like to lie

im loveless in june

and lost in july

been listening to love songs,

"the old college try"

but the mountain goats don't cut it

at least not tonight

you know i don't love you

you know you're my world

you know i'm bad at this

you know that this hurts

i wrote you a poem

and bought you a rose

forgot to send it

to take off the thorns

i made you some dinner

but it burned 'fore it baked

have no love to give

so i'll give you something fake

i like you a lot

but like does not love make

but we'll sit in the park

for old romance's sake”

Title: Hollyhocks and Fruit by Two Columns

Artist: Jan van Huysum

Date: 1730

Dior Print Bracelet Which Features A Beautiful Cabochon Opal At Center Along With Pink and Yellow Sapphires, Tsavorites, Spessartite Garnets and Paraiba Tourmalines

Photo Courtesy: Dior

Heather Havrilesky, Ask Polly: Help, I'm the Loneliest Person in the World! / Lincoln, Saint Bernard / unknown / Virginia Woolf, The Waves / unknown / Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Gambler / @/mxmorggo (instagram)