![]() In one cabinet the premium whisky was labelled: “The Owner’s Stash: please only drink if your previous month was $100,000.00+.”įor all his swagger and good looks, Lax seemed worried about how he’d come across on the page. The large white kitchen brimmed with snacks. Decks of cards were stacked up between a ping-pong table and video-game consoles. ![]() His home was a mix of sleek minimalism and things a teenage boy might buy if he had the money. Lax greeted me warmly, speaking with a faint Midwestern twang. He is not the only magician gaming the viral video economy (a British rival called Julius Dein operated his own empire in Mexico for 18 months), but he is arguably the most determined.Ī few months later I drove to Henderson, a wealthy town outside Las Vegas, to meet Lax (he has since bought a larger property in the same area). And I’ve turned my fiancée and all our friends into fb influencers too.” It was a characteristically bold introduction. “Randomly, I’m the most-viewed influencer on Facebook. He contacted me in 2020 to congratulate me on the book I’d just published, a sociological study of elite nightclubs, and suggested that perhaps I should look at the “new creative elites” next. It was Rick Lax himself who led me to become straw-deep in toilet milkshake. “I love being low-key and flying under the radar, and just getting rich.” Entering the viral-content game involves a certain surrendering of artistic aspirations, but Rothfuss says she doesn’t care. A year later she bought her first mansion. At one point she worked as a nanny in Los Angeles to make ends meet between sporadic bookings.Ī friend was making videos for Rick Lax, and invited Rothfuss to join in 2019. She downplays this ambition now, but for years she bounced between different gigs, including a stint on a cruise ship. She studied music and once dreamt of becoming a jazz singer. Rothfuss is tall and slim with dark hair and a pale, angular face (she was amused when one commenter described her as looking like “a pretty donkey”). One of these, posted last summer under the heading “Ultimate Spaghetti Trick!!”, featured a woman dumping pasta and tomato sauce onto a shiny white marble counter, mixing it up, then proudly proclaiming this to be the authentic Italian method. ![]() The network is best known for what you might call appalling cooking videos. He also posts his creators’ videos on his own Facebook page, which has 14m followers. He releases new instructions every time the algorithm changes substantially, and offers feedback on people’s videos. In exchange, he gives them online tutorials about how to make viral content: everything from how to hold the camera to which metrics matter to Facebook. He takes a slice of the ad revenue that creators earn. Lax manages his network like a cross between a Hollywood agent and a schoolteacher. Most fall into genres: diy, crafts, hazards, adultery and proposals. Though the clips usually look like authentic user-generated material, all are scripted. They produce short videos timed to last the precise number of seconds that Facebook requires a clip to run to be eligible for an ad (this used to be three minutes but recently went down to one). Rothfuss and Flom are among the 180 video-makers (or “creators” in the industry’s jargon) working with a Las Vegas magician called Rick Lax. And that method is designed by magicians. Though that formula isn’t perfect – you never quite know what the algorithms of the different platforms will favour or what will strike a chord with viewers – a group of people have come as close as anyone to creating a method for going viral. But it turns out that there’s a formula to getting people to watch you on social media. On a good day, one of these short clips could earn Rothfuss enough to buy a Tesla.īefore I started looking into this corner of the content economy I assumed that the videos that went viral were made by Gen Z-ers playing around and occasionally surfing a serendipitous wave. Each element of the video had been tested for its effectiveness in getting people to keep watching. It was that they were making so much money doing them. It wasn’t just that people were doing ridiculous things with toilet bowls. But hanging out in this content factory was, well, extra. As a cultural sociologist, I’ve embedded myself in some strange situations.
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