“There’s a point when the narrative of how that story’s being disseminated shifts completely,” A.J. Daulerio told him. “It gets picked up by the slipstream of the Internet, and, more importantly, by outside of the Internet.”
Daulerio, formerly the editor of Gawker and Deadspin, notes something that we know all too well at Boing Boing: the most successful posts, traffic-wise, are rarely the ones that are conspicuously “viral” or which enter the realm of public discussion. This post about frazil ice was constantly in our top lists, month after month, thanks to it being in a chain email ricocheting endlessly around the grandmothersphere.