A tale of two substack articles

An analysis of a disparity of success.

So, I published two articles over memorial day weekend, and there was a very visible difference in the success of these two articles. The former had twenty-two likes, while the latter had only five likes. The former had over 170 views, while the latter had over 60 views.

The former more successful article is “Parasocial relationships” while the latter less successful article is the “Parable of the impending flood”.

I honestly was disappointed that there is such a disparity of success, and I will spend the rest of this article theorizing on my end why this happened.

One way to analyze this situation is by the content, substance, and subject of the respective articles. The one is me getting vulnerable about relationships, while the other is an esoteric political and legal parable. It seems that many people find the former irresistible. This is disappointing because the future of this publication is going to be mostly esoteric legal theory, and sparingly will this author get emotionally vulnerable.

Another thing that probably tilted the scales is the thumbnails. The latter article has a thumbnail of a flood, with brownish waters and all. The former article has an anime girl (actually a vtuber, but not that different) as the thumbnail. Of course the internet loves anime. As someone who mildly enjoys anime, I am taking note of this. One caution I have with myself is to not be perpetuating lewdness. I am a fanatically religious Yankee, and I am vehemently opposed to sexual immorality; both politically, socially, and personally. It would obviously be hypocritical of me to be poasting lewd waifus in order to tempt sensitive young readers to click on the bait and make engagement go up. But anime can be wholesome; it is objectively a beautiful form of art. So, a happy medium? I am not sure; advice will be helpful.

Probably the biggest element to tip the scales as they did was timing. For any of my non-American readers, I need to explain memorial day. So in the United States of America, the last Monday of May is Memorial day. It is a tradition going back to the war between the states (1861-1865)¹ and it is a celebration, honoring, and remembrance of those American soldiers who died during their duty. Because many people have Monday off of work, and the climate is so that it is basically during the beginning of summer, many Americans take the liberty to vacate or otherwise recreate in a rural or natural area. This often includes camping or visiting family.

The former article was released Friday morning, which is probably before many people left for vacation. It wouldn’t surprise me if many of my readers read the article before they left for vacation. My latter article had the misfortune of releasing Saturday morning. Most people probably were already on vacation: hanging out with family, camping, or otherwise touching grass instead of being terminally online (good for you btw).

This causes me to ponder the broader issue of timing. Generally, weekends and holidays seem to be dead zones for engagement. I can schedule articles to publish in the future; but I wonder if I had a schedule of an article a week, what day of the week should that be? Monday? Tuesday? Wednesday? Thursday? Friday? What day of the week do you think is best?

1. More commonly known as the American Civil War.