Let’s put a nice bow on this experiment.
A year ago I made an anonymous twitter account called “Tech Twitter Bachelor Board” — where I simply tweeted a list of people that made the list. It was one of those things that I didn’t think too much about, I thought the idea was hilarious and I did it.
People have a love / hate relationships with lists
They like it when they make good ones, and have a social obligation to support their friends if they make it on
It’s incredibly shareable
And even if you don’t want to publicly support it — you’ll complain and share it privately… so the job is getting done either way
This last point proved to be the most right. Although the tweet itself didn’t go viral by any means… the engagement & buzz that circled around it were undeniable.
Shortly after the tweet was live for an hour, Taylor Lorenz had dm’d the account. As far as social experiments go — I had made it. But I was anonymous. A very private joy, although a handful of friends guessed that it was me. And I eventually conceded the truth.
I shut it down quickly. Changed the handle, and used it for a new experiment in my free time.
Fast forward to this past Friday. I’m sitting in my apartment, maybe on my second drink and I get a text from a friend.
Coyne messages the group “Maybe COVID has cooled off enough for me to start tweeting out lists of hottest men over 40 in venture capital.”
An obvious joke to my previous Twitter account. Combined with — let’s call the other person in the chat BOYBOY — BOYBOY egging that this was the best thing I’ve built in my product career (ouch!), my tipsy self was pushed over the edge.
Within 30 minutes I had the site up and running through Universe. BOYBOY was giving me copy suggestions, and everyone was throwing names out as to who should be on the list. There were some debates, but really just trying to make the whole thing splash.
Then it was ready. But obviously I cant tweet this thing out. That’s not how this works. Enter BOYBOY. They suggested going through something people already have mixed feelings about. VCBrags & FounderBrags.
I dm’d them asking not to share my identity. VCBrags didn’t share it. FounderBrags did. And it was done. It was out there — and it was growing.
In one night and a full day, we’ve received 30k+ hits and still going. Some tech-glitterati retweets. Subscribers from A16Z, and more.
Yesterday, during my government excused walk. A writer from Forbes reached out. The groupchat was conflicted so we elected not to say anything at all. But we got a fun story — LINK. Right now the story is tracking at 7k+ views.
Put up a “product” in under an hour. Find a channel to distribute. Make it inherently shareable by instantly including people with high spread. That’s one way to do it.
I wanted to share the story because, I think overall it’s just fun — but could have easily gone south fast. We start messing with the list just because we can. Put voting in. There’s a lot of paths that just aren’t fun + I simply don’t have the time for.
But I do think there’s a lot of interesting things that have come out of this.
People did subscribe, either out of morbid curiosity or genuine interest… they want to see if it could be useful — and in tech gossip is always useful :p
People did reach out to guys on the list / follow their accounts — everyone wants to be told, what the best is
Guys did ask to get put on the list
Guys were genuinely flattered — something something the patriarchy something something — I don’t think most guys view themselves as “beautiful” and to be told that is something special… I didn’t think I was attractive until one specific moment after college… it be like that sometimes
I could write more, but I think this is a good stopping point. I hope nobody took this too seriously. That it was an enjoyable moment overall, and took your mind off the constant onslaught of the macro-climate.
Much love.
I don’t do edits really, so excuse typos and things that don’t make sense.
Thanks so much for giving me your attention. I hope it was worth it, if not… unsubscribing will not hurt my feelings, and will give you back time you literally cannot have back.
Much love.