the world is such a fascinating and interesting place and i love analyzing different outcomes to
try and understand why things did or didn't happen while most of the time i studied human behavior
through various forms of psychology and philosophy social media is also really intriguing today
i watched the new danny gonzalez video where he tried to make his tiktok song
go viral and spoiler it didn't happen but why as humans we crave control and are constantly
looking for patterns and formulas books and online courses claim they can help you with anything
from confidence to dropping 10 pounds to going viral on tiktok something we want to believe is
that we can analyze success break it down into smaller parts and replicate it in danny's new
video that's exactly what he tried to do in the video he did far more research than i expected
him to do and he became a true scientist danny researched all of the most popular tiktok songs
and looked for similarities he checked to see what the beat sounded like and he even went as far
as to take all of the lyrics from those songs to create a word cloud although danny broke this down
into different parts to try to make his song go viral he went even further he used the wisdom of
the crowd by talking to friends on tiktok to see what they said made a song go viral and he even
talked to them about using his song to help make it go viral with massive influencers using his
song or duetting it this was danny's ace in the hole what i was even more surprised by was that
once people figured out that it was danny that should have been a done deal but unfortunately
the song still didn't go viral this piques my interest because although i can't give too many
details my day job is in marketing and branding and i'm currently working on a case study so
without cheating pause this video for a second and leave a comment with your answer to this question
influencers with a combined 52 million followers promoted something of those 52 million followers
how many do you think got involved or what percentage do you think got involved all right did
you leave your answer down in the comments section for anyone in sales and marketing you know that
sometimes even a one percent conversion rate is a success so out of the 52 million followers even if
we cut that number in half based on potential overlap what should the conversion rate be if
we reduced it to 26 million unique followers and look for a one percent conversion that'd be 260
000 the actual number less than 37 000. that's a 0.1 percent conversion rate if we conservatively
assume that there are 26 million unique followers so returning back to danny gonzalez trying to make
this tik tok song go viral how can we explain what happened he put the pieces of the puzzle together
but he didn't get the results he was hoping for with so many people hoping to make it on social
media to become an entrepreneur or just for the cloud i thought it'd be fun to come up with some
possible explanations for why the danny gonzalez tik tok song didn't go viral but before we jump
into this video if you're new to the rewired soul make sure you subscribe and ring that notification
bell here we use critical thinking and practice skepticism to better understand the world and
improve our overall well-being and if you're interested in any of the books that i mentioned
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let's pretend you have a friend who is a massive danny gonzalez fan but they haven't seen this new
video yet you're hanging out with them while social distancing and wearing a mask of course
and you do a fun little experiment you don't tell them the specifics about danny's project but you
tell them danny gonzales made this sick song on tiktok and it went viral if they're truly greg
how do you think they'd respond i'd be willing to bet that they'd say well duh danny is awesome
of course it went viral and then you tell them that you were just kidding and the whole thing
kind of flopped now you're sitting with them awkwardly because of this little experiment they
unwittingly participated in the reason i give this hypothetical situation with your friend is that
we all fall victim to what professor duncan watts calls creeping determinism duncan watts wrote one
of my favorite books titled everything is obvious once you know the answer he explains that creeping
determinism is our post-hoc rationalization of results by saying that we knew it all along
this is actually impossible but our ego loves to jump in and act like we're fortune tellers and
knew everything without all of the information to possibly come to an exact conclusion
the reality is that danny gonzalez is a great example of how we try to replicate success
but it doesn't always work out this is why economists and investors aren't nearly as great
at what they do as we think they are if there was a formula for hit movies would they have
almost passed on star wars if there was a formula for a breakout book series would jk rowling had
been turned down by multiple publishers before getting a deal for harry potter if i came up to
you a couple months ago and said hey a tatted up 40-something-year-old on tiktok is going to blow
up for riding a skateboard listening to fleetwood mac would you believe me not only did 420 dogface
go viral but ocean spray even bought him a truck your creeping determinism may try to explain why
he went viral but the reality is that nobody could have predicted what happened personally i'm not
surprised that danny gonzalez's tiktok song didn't go viral what i am surprised about is how much
work he did without it getting much traction while some people may think that i over analyze things
i think it's extremely important to find lessons in as many places as possible i'm the father of an
11 year old boy and this world doesn't always work out the way we think it does if you watch my video
yesterday about how mlms track people you learned about the just world fallacy something i try to
teach my son is that we don't have control over outcomes but we do have control over effort since
the outcomes are out of our control we should only judge ourselves based on the effort that we put in
danny put in more effort than i even expected him to not only did he do quite a bit of
research before diving into this project but he posted consistently a topic that i recently
became interested in is luck versus skill so i've recently read some books on the psychology of luck
two books that did a great job diving into the research were the luck factor and the serendipity
mindset and if you're interested in the topic of luck and inequality i highly recommend the book
success and luck something i learned from these books on the psychology of luck is that so much
of our success is a numbers game the more we try the more chances we have to succeed so like i said
i'm not a surprise that danny didn't go viral as i am that he put in a ton of work and still didn't
reach his goal as a content creator and someone in marketing i think it was pure genius he made daily
videos using his song until it went viral and it was also a great idea to try a few other tiktok
trends to make the song pop off unfortunately none of these things worked danny did get almost
2 000 people to use the song but his goal was 50 000. even though he didn't hit his goal i think it
was a great experiment and probably a humbling experience for him oftentimes the social media
tycoon garyvee says that he wishes he could start all over and build from the ground up if danny's
video taught us anything it's that it's not that easy and there may not be an exact formula
but what's the biggest takeaway for all of us it's that we need to work on finding the balance
between working hard and cutting ourselves some slack whether you're trying to build a social
media following or just trying to succeed at your day job sometimes we work hard but things
don't work out sometimes the most we can do is reflect on the situation and ask ourselves
did i try my best if the answer is no we can try some deliberate practice in certain areas
but if the answer is yes we need to practice some self-compassion and avoid the just world fallacy
all right everybody i hope you enjoyed another one of these quick video essays i'm trying to
get back on the ball like i said like i said in my video yesterday about how mlms trap you and by the
way if you didn't watch it go watch it but like i said yesterday i just have a bajillion ideas
i'm like i need to get them out so today when i was watching danny's video i was like huh this
is something interesting because like i said i'm working on a case study for work and i'll
i'll probably release the details like in a month maybe a month or so um but it's really interesting
because a lot of the conventional wisdom we have about how things go viral a lot of it is
just creeping determinism like well of course of course 420 dog face went viral for skateboarding
and drinking cranberry juice of course right and i think one of the most important things all of
us could do is practice some intellectual humility and just be like i don't know i'm surprised that
happened or you surprised i'm pretty surprised too you know what i mean but all this involves
you know us developing our critical thinking skills uh our decision making and all that kind
of stuff so i hope you enjoyed this video and remember to cut yourself some slack all right
but if you like this video please give it a thumbs up if you're new make sure you subscribe and ring
that notification bell and a huge thank you to everybody who supports the channel over on patreon
or gets the books from the description with my affiliate links because you like reading and like
supporting the channel you're all awesome alright thanks again for watching i'll see you next time