Hemingway’s Cringe Mountain & The Viral Structure

Hey Climbers. This Week — Hemingway’s Cringe Mountain, why a bottle rolling down stairs goes viral and you can’t, and creative inspo from a student which earned the attention of a major global brand.

Hemingway’s Cringe Mountain

A less current example this week. The year was 1934.

A writer named Hemingway sent a letter of advice to a writer named F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was struggling with his newest novel. He said:

Hemingway would have been a hit on Tiktok. Because he knew then what we know about creating content now: in the climbing phase, quantity is vital. Never underestimate the power of mass and repetition.

Climber tip of the week

Why a glass bottle rolling down some stairs can go viral and you can’t

A few months ago, jars rolling down stairs took the internet by storm.

These videos were inescapable. And strangely addictive. We’d watch in horror and awe as pasta sauce jars, pickle jars, beer bottles and more bounced gallantly toward their probable doom.

Would it be the third stair? The ninth? Or maybe it wouldn’t smash at all! We had to find out.

Upon first glance, these videos could be written off as a dumb internet trend that just fluked virality.

But look a little closer and they possess the one key thing that nearly every viral video has in common:

Hook, tease, reveal.

Hook: Oo, there’s a bottle full of pasta sauce. What’s it doin?
Tease: Oh my god, it’s bouncing down the stairs, will it smash?
Reveal: It smashed on the fourth stair!

If you can nail this structure, you can nail virality. But why?

Watch time is god

All TikTok wants is for people to spend more time on TikTok. For this reason, audience watch time is the key metric used by the algorithm to decide whether your video gets boosted to more people or not.

The viral structure keeps people watching.

I used it (verbally, as opposed to visually, like the bottles) in one of my most viral videos - which got 42 million views.

Let’s be clear, though. There are far more important things than going viral (which I’ll talk about here in the future). But understanding why things connect with audiences will help you be a stronger creative.

The one step you can take today

Try starting your next video with the most interesting part first. No context, no “hey guys, just jumping on here…”. Just straight into it. But here’s the key; don’t give it all away. Leave something to be revealed. But whatever you do, make sure by the end of the video, you deliver.

Creative inspo of the week

This clever campaign by a Miami student for KitKat, encouraging people to take a break from social media.

Til next time,

Keep climbin’

Eri out xox

Pssst. Hey! You got to the bottom, nice! That means you get to choose the content for next week. Hit reply and tell me if you’d rather hear about:

1. Where all the good video ideas are hiding

2. Reverse engineering shareability