Sadness depresses our impulse for social sharing. It’s why nobody wanted to share the Magnum photos but everybody gladly shared the ones on the Huffington Post. The HuffPo photos were awe-some; they made us angry, or they surprised us. Such emotions trigger a desire to act—they are arousing—and that is exactly the reaction a publisher hopes to exploit. “People get viral content wrong,” Eli Pariser, the founder of Upworthy, told Businessweek. “They imagine that the reason people share stuff is to have a laugh. But a huge part of sharing is being passionate about something, about shedding light
...more
