How to build passion in your audience using genuine psychology
My previous iteration of this headline was: “How to make your audience addicted to you...”
Because this psychology principle(coincidentally the grounds for this argument) is related to the same brain receptors that cause addiction. However, I went against it because, a) Addictions are bad. And b) I wasn’t really in the mood to go full “A-list Copywriter” on you.
Anyways, I have good news:
Relying on AI for content creation has made the new generation of creators ignorant and lazy. Both of these infamous traits have caused harm more than good to anyone who dared possess the. It can be observed throughout history, whole empires have been overthrown because they held such attitudes. The clever and courageous always take advantage of such fleeting moments of ignorance.
Current content creation(which is mostly AI content) has left an unrecognized yearning in the hearts of 90% of todays audiences. Our best plan of action right now is to gain their attention to make them realize that they were utterly lost this whole time.
What an irrelevant character would do is try being brave, face the ultimate challenge, and get slapped in the face for abysmal efforts. A hero however, would defeat their fear, maximize their chances at success, and inevitably achieve greatness. Deathly boring AI generated content has created just that opportunity. A chance to finally be at least your own hero for once.
All you have to do is simply make others feel things that AI-generated content can’t. Easy, right? It’s only going to take the knowledge to build a “better-than-average” conditional relationship with your audience.
Wait…
Conditional?!
That’s right. Act surprised later. It would be no lie to say that you and your audience only tolerate each other because you are in some way useful to each other(unless the audience is your mom or something). Why would it be any way else? Why should it be? It’s a logical trade. You use your audience to gain something, while your audience uses you - in some way - to improve their lives. The relationship dynamics have been established. Your responsibility now is to understand how to take that sort of relationship a layer deeper.
They say conditional relationships don’t last. To some extent, what they say is true. Even so it often takes mere seconds for someone to be completely forgotten in the depths of the internet abyss. It’s dog-eat-dog in the ruthless creator space.
And that’s fine. Everyone - at least once in their lifetime - must experience a conditional relationship that ends in an ugly way, so they can finally understand that it’s impossible to maintain relationships with people you have surpassed in terms of growth. When the pain outweighs the benefit it is unreasonable for a relationship to continue. It is illogical. The relationship becomes one-sided, it tips the relationship-scale and turns it into something bland and fruitless.
The Law of Equivalent Exchange says:
“In order to obtain, something of equal value must be lost.”
Conditional relationships end when this law is not satisfied. As do all things.
(It is common to feel guilty about this but it shouldn’t be. Normalize cutting off the ones who are nothing but dead weight. It’s harsh. But that’s how it should be.)
With your audience, only a conditional relationship can be achieved. And for a conditional relationship to strive:
You must always give even if you expect nothing in return.
To make people stick around you must be valuable.
People continue to grow. If they don’t experience growth through you, they will move on elsewhere.
Make this your forte. Use this to break the deadlock, and get a higher percentage of people invested in you right off the bat. While your peers struggle to appeal to anyone, you build connections left and right, without having to show up on someone’s feed a million times first.
The Crabby Advice
Advice in the Creator Jungle right now seems to be to create and upload a crabload of AI content, post it everywhere, do it 24/7 and you might win.
First of all, how does one even enjoy content-creation like that? Second, hard work is cool, but only if your creative forces are being utilized for it. The bare minimum of being a “smart” person is that you should be open enough to accept that you know nothing. In the Creator World today, you don’t have to double-down on the quantity of your content. But the quality. And what better a way to produce pure quality than to learn exactly what appeals to the human psyche.
What payoff is anyone getting from ugly short form posts that are watered down to the intellectual level of a rat? The content that ultimately moves the needle is the content that builds rapport. The content that drips with mystique, vigor, the content that is spun around in a unique way. Stop insulting your audience with basic levels of information, they are more than capable of comprehending your message at its full complexual capacity.
The Graceful Addiction
Now, to cause anything remotely close to addiction which would be passion(or at least I would like to believe it to be). One must first understand what is addiction. I wouldn’t know... obviously haha!… phew!
So, let’s hear how addicts describe it.
The #1 word addicts use to describe addiction is...
“Escape”
An escape from all the emotional pain they’re in. Addiction is born when escape is found. When - even for a split second - something can distract you from your awful morose life. It’s not a means to pleasure. It’s a relief from reality.
Dopamine Tactics
Addiction has everything to do with dopamine.
A common misconception about dopamine is that it’s a “pleasure hormone”. It’s not. It’s actually a “motivation chemical”. It is the drive that forces you take action towards something that could possibly give you some form of pleasure.
Dopamine flows in the brain when we experience a novel object or a novel environment.
Simply put, if you didn’t have any dopamine receptors, you would see chocolate but you wouldn’t get up and go eat it.
We cannot survive without dopamine.
Dopamine. The motivation chemical. The end-all-be-all of all conditional relationships(or even unconditional, in my skeptical opinion), is the keystone that holds the power to keep relationships afloat.
I’m not being dramatic when I tell you that ignoring this will make you a part of the fools who will soon be ignored by their audience as more and more people start to capitalize on such “Dopamine Tactics”.
Stop playing the content creation game blind-folded. At least, for your sake, be open enough to admit that AI could replace you. Your content is being replicated already, chances are, you yourself already make content with AI. And that’s not a good idea. Especially if you don’t know what qualifies as attention worthy content and what doesn’t. Soon, your audience will find you to be average and begin to scroll past your robotic intentions. But, we don’t want that. No, Sir. That would be, as I often say, bad for business.
The Shiny Golden Key
To cultivate harmonious passion... To build anticipation... To draw your readers in like moths to a flame... You need to sprinkle dopamine-inducing shiny objects into everything you create, like a Shiny Golden Key. You want your content to be the very novel object that kickstarts dopamine and gets you the undivided attention of the masses you rightfully deserve.
This is how you condition the brains of your readers and develop “mental real-estate”. Anywhere they see an idea you talk about. It reminds them of you. Creating a false-ish reality where they feel that concept belongs to you. You know it doesn’t. Hell, even they know it doesn’t. But it produces the same effect it would if you really did invent that idea. How cool is that?!
Illustrating perspectives in a new light
“If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s.”
-Joseph Campbell
Be careful when copying every Ben and Jerry that went viral, you must be unique. Soak your chaotic world-view, your stories, your quirky analogies, your perspective into everything. It is now your duty to best make sense of the information you are unveiling to your audience(without a reductionist approached). Like a language only you and your people understand. It doesn’t have to be for everyone, in fact, deliberately make sure it is not for everyone. Only attract those you wish to be identified with.
For novelty to exist, there must be chaos. It is important to face the “unknown”. How does man know that he is on the right path? The path disappears for him, that’s how he knows.
Some conceited beings might not be aware of it. But as humans, this is what we really enjoy. Chaos, with some form of order. No one wants the same song to play on repeat, forever. We’d rather take the risk of listening to something new but perhaps, in the same genre. A little bit of mystery, a little bit of familiarity.
“Order is not enough. You can’t just be stable, and secure, and unchanging, because there are still vital and important new things to be learned. You need to put one foot in what you mastered and understood and the other in what you are currently exploring and mastering. That is where meaning is to be found.”
-Jordan Peterson
Educate. Not in a robotic kind of way. Not in a way common kind of way. But your special way. There are hundreds(if not, thousands) of validated ideas all over the earth. You can use any of them at any given time. Portray them in a way only you understand, a few see it as you do and suddenly your surrounded by a horde that responds to ideas just as you do.
Become Rocky Balboa
Rocky (played by Sylvester Stallone in the movie series, “Rocky”) did plenty of things right. But we are only interested in what made it a HIT. (Cuz’ that’s where the money is at)
And what made it stick was the way it inspired plenty to make braver decisions in their everyday lives that ultimately lead to a better, more fulfilling life.
Inspiration provides clarity to make certain decisions in life. When you - through your ideas - give someone the right pieces to a puzzle. You become the puzzle piece whose presence creates a sense of conclusion, the puzzle piece that provides them with the clear feeling of wholeness, and ultimately, the reason they try something new. All the positive juices that flow during this whole act are then traced back to you.
Be Quick With A Joke:
Memes
Jokes
Fun facts
All of these forms of media are accepted with open-hearts all over the world for one simple reason.
They entertain.
The is why “meme accounts” exist and have massive followings. And don’t even get me started on how Tiktok has everyone in a bloody chokehold. People love entertainment. They crave it. They can’t live without it. A good laugh mends a broken soul. Entertainment, it’s a multi-billion-dollar industry for a reason, you know?
Entertaining your audience is a one-way ticket to becoming their “escape”. The escape that becomes as effective as the dullness of a person’s life increases (and that, as you may know, happens all the time). The escape that acts as a light in the pit of sadness life often has us drenched in.
Humor, drama, emotions. They are enough to make us forget about our lives for a while. They are the driving-forces that keep our eyes glued to a screen for hours on end. They are like the clouds that shelter us from the flaming sun for as long as they can. But can let these clouds stick around as long as you want. They are yours to exploit.
In summary:
Here’s what the steps should look like:
Recognize the relationship you can build with your audience(or want to build).
Familiarize yourself with the concept of dopamine.
Consciously integrate these objectives in your content until you start doing it unconsciously.
Enjoy followers who stick with you for years.
That’s all. Thanks for reading.
-Affan
