Building Virality in Web3

Transcript

hey guys thanks for hanging out for like the whole day um just to make things a little bit like less serious because it's literally the last talk and we're wrapping up i'm just gonna like hand out wine to people like because why not here people pleasing it's on brand also this helps calm my nerves too so i'm trying to make this as awkward as possible yeah if you're if you're under 21 maybe don't take one

[Music] um okay we'll just maybe hand out like a few more of these but if you really really want one like raise your hand yes and we'll get you one there now it'll be more enjoyable okay so hi everyone i'm people pleaser and i'm a digital artist um building and creating and crypto and web3 um and in the serious like very spirit of professionalism i've used comic stands for my entire presentation today

and i'll be talking about building virality in web 3. so before i begin i'm going to start with the disclaimer that you're listening to somebody who sold board apes at 0.48 so probably don't listen to me this is not financial advice um and for those in the audience who might not be familiar with my work typically on these panels or podcasts and interviews i usually go over like my career and story which starts somewhere where last year i was jobless and then i discovered defy and then my life exploded and then somehow ended up on fortune magazine

but this is just what happened to me and i feel like it might not be like relatable or necessarily helpful to you guys so i thought i might switch it up today and talk about something that people might find more useful which is um i guess like the topic of making things go viral and so um yeah previously in like web 2 where content was owned by centralized entities the way for things to go viral were often like dictated by the platform such as using instagram hashtags buying engagement paying for promoted posts and then so if you're someone like me

i literally had zero followers on any sort of platform just about you know a year ago i'm going to share some of my learnings and my experience for how to build virality or make something go viral in web3 and so um what is the role of virality in web3 well i mean for starters it can help sell nfts build communities pump tokens and crypto raise awareness spread information ultimately i think it like all goes back to making money and so the concept of going viral in web3 is extremely valuable we're no longer talking about you know getting likes or imaginary internet

points in exchange for some happy brain chemicals web 3 is literally about turning those imaginary internet points into magic internet money which is actually can be real money um so yeah if you're building any type of like product in crypto or web3 you're probably looking to gain traction or you know for your project to go viral and obviously with doge we see um you know the power of the meme or you know something going viral translating to real world values and you know sometimes it can outweigh common sense so you know like people don't really can't really explain why this happened it just did and then now doge um which was

originally a meme has now turned into obviously over 33 dollar billion market cap so um what makes something go viral well in my opinion i think there's usually two factors there's like the meme factor and the cool factor so it's like either something is like really me or you look at something you're like this is really cool and those are the main two things that usually make people want to share something with someone else and then so this brings me to the topic of memes and memes are probably one of the most important components of web3 our generation has somehow created an entire culture and language around this and of course with the help of the

internet it is now one of the cheapest and most efficient ways to spread information so um you know to make a meme you probably have to understand it first and so um in dissecting a meme there's usually several elements to what could make a meme successful but um it's essential to look at each component uh you know obviously i'm no mean phd but i try my best and i've narrowed it down to these like few elements for example memes are usually funny and they're relatable and exaggerated and absurd and then last but not least there's always an element of serendipity to memes and so um

the people pleaser playbook or sort of like how i go about things is simple really like most of the time i see myself as a sponge and then i'm absorbing content constantly and whenever i see something go viral and interesting or like it lingers the mind i always ask myself what was it that made it cool and interesting and then i try to dissect and extract that and then apply to my work and so an example of this is i often watch like japanese commercials they're super like ridiculous and over the top and often unintentionally become memes and um so i basically if you've ever followed my earlier d5 animations i often incorporated elements of this into

the work itself which brings me to one of my most viral pieces to date which was the x times y equals k video for uniswap um which now has about like 700 000 views on twitter within like the first 24 hours it got over half a million views and i mean obviously unisop v3 was already in itself a very very highly anticipated announcement but basically when i'm making my videos i have one goal in mind which is to evoke a certain reaction from my audience and that reaction is uh what did i just watch basically and so usually when that is the reaction that people have when they watch my videos i

consider it a success because that's actually uh what makes them watch it again and then also want to share with their friends you're like can you explain this i don't know what i just watched and then you know so it's kind of like a way to like make it pass on basically and then so uh but i mean that was on the meme side of things but for the cool factor you know i obviously incorporated a lot of symbolism and easter eggs um into the animation uh which i think were all probably things that helped make it go viral um anyway and then so my thinking behind doing the fortune magazine uh which was like the august september issue which also

went like pretty viral was um i mean basically i just like put a bunch of crypto anonymous influencers on the cover so with each of these influencers having like you know between like 50 to 100 000 followers and then they're obviously going to get excited and tweet about it um the thing essentially markets itself so it's like a self-marketing um formula that i have like come up with uh to i guess help make it go viral um and also part of why people love memes is like it feels like an inside joke and then so you know part of like putting you know all these people on the cover of a major magazine feels like putting a giant inside joke onto something mainstream and i feel like you know

that's also basically what helped set it off and so about like the cool factor um sometimes people share and spread content just because simply because it's cool and so i mean taste and coolness is obviously like very varied from person person it's extremely subjective but in tackling how to create something cool um my suggestion is similar to that of dissecting memes basically when you watch something cool just try to think why was this cool and then try to extract elements of that and apply it to your own work but um i don't know it's like i can't teach you how to be cool you either have it or you don't

and um i mean obviously not all of my content has gone viral or proven to be successful and so i think it goes to show that you know even when i spend most of my time trying to understand and recreate um something viral obviously it's um really hit or miss you know it's like um impossible to predict whether something will work and so or maybe it just wasn't that cool or funny but i mean who really knows right all in all when you're creating something and hoping for it to go viral just ask yourself this question is it me me or is it cool or both and last but not least the one element

that nobody can artificially recreate or predict is the element of serendipity and oftentimes we can estimate whether something might go viral but no one can know for sure because you can't really predict the behavioral um patterns of a large large group of people which is essentially your target audience right so i mean i guess that's um also what makes memes and like the whole space of web3 and everything in between so magical as well because there's always that one element that we can't properly predict or recreate um and then last but not least if you've had some success or made some money during this bull run in the land of web3

in general i think it's a positive some game so it's always good to give back i try to um you know spread this message in all of my talks and everything i mean creating wealth and web3 is really cool but it's even cooler to share it so yeah that's it and that's last talk so we can all drink more wine and like loosen up and stuff