I think it’s a very common experience of writers that they have a very poor ability to predict what gets a lot of attention and what does not. I think this is true of Aella and her tweets
It’s true of Aella? This Aella right here:
By 2021, she was described as having set herself apart partly by conducting extensive market research, e.g. surveying almost 400 fellow female OnlyFans performers about their incomes and identifying factors that were correlated with higher earnings.[6]
I remain skeptical.
But note that you seem to be responding to what seems like a strawman:
So I don’t expect that all of her popular twits are expected to be.
If you post 10 things that are all written so as to have the properties of “things that often—at least 10% of the time—go viral”, and 1–2 of them go viral, then even if (as is likely the case) you could not have predicted in advance which of those 10 things would be the ones that went viral, it is nonetheless absurd to say of you that you “have a very poor ability to predict what gets a lot of attention and what does not”, or that you are not consciously posting engagement bait.
I expressed myself somewhat poorly. I of course should not imply that a twitter account with 200,000+ followers that has built a following on twitter does not have unusually good models about how to get engagement from twitter users, and doesn’t employ heuristics developed in order to maintain and increase the engagement.
But I stand by this: the reason Aella posts genuine-seeming confusion by people’s reactions to her writing, is not that she has goodharted on engagement at the cost of truth/honesty, but because she has found a part of her genuine+honest self that creates a lot of engagement. In the same way that people were not lying about whether a certain dress appeared to them as black & blue or orange & gold, Aella is not lying about whether she understands others’ behavior or interpretations of text, even though she may be writing about these specific subjects on twitter due to them being the sort of thing that gets a lot of engagement (as the dress did).
If you merely mean to say that Aella is aware that posting this sort of text will get a lot of engagement, then we have no disagreement. If otherwise, I’d be happy to discuss and defend specific examples, though I can no longer search them myself because her account is private.
It’s true of Aella? This Aella right here:
I remain skeptical.
But note that you seem to be responding to what seems like a strawman:
If you post 10 things that are all written so as to have the properties of “things that often—at least 10% of the time—go viral”, and 1–2 of them go viral, then even if (as is likely the case) you could not have predicted in advance which of those 10 things would be the ones that went viral, it is nonetheless absurd to say of you that you “have a very poor ability to predict what gets a lot of attention and what does not”, or that you are not consciously posting engagement bait.
I expressed myself somewhat poorly. I of course should not imply that a twitter account with 200,000+ followers that has built a following on twitter does not have unusually good models about how to get engagement from twitter users, and doesn’t employ heuristics developed in order to maintain and increase the engagement.
But I stand by this: the reason Aella posts genuine-seeming confusion by people’s reactions to her writing, is not that she has goodharted on engagement at the cost of truth/honesty, but because she has found a part of her genuine+honest self that creates a lot of engagement. In the same way that people were not lying about whether a certain dress appeared to them as black & blue or orange & gold, Aella is not lying about whether she understands others’ behavior or interpretations of text, even though she may be writing about these specific subjects on twitter due to them being the sort of thing that gets a lot of engagement (as the dress did).
If you merely mean to say that Aella is aware that posting this sort of text will get a lot of engagement, then we have no disagreement. If otherwise, I’d be happy to discuss and defend specific examples, though I can no longer search them myself because her account is private.