Data or Vibes?

If you’re in the super early days of a project, fuck the data.

I say this as a former data engineer at American Express. When you’re early days building a new startup or social media presence or whatever it might be, there’s just not enough data points to rely on. All you have are vibes. Fuck the data, follow the vibes.

This sounds like some hippie-dippie nonsense, but it’s actually a commonly accepted idea in early-stage venture capital. You invest in the founders’ vibes because there’s not enough data to go on around the business. How do you evaluate a business that doesn’t exist yet? You can’t. It’s not like you can use data from the business. There’s no business yet, remember? It’s just a kid with an idea and maybe a crappy half-baked product that will change and evolve a million times. And sure, you can use data from other people’s business as a comparison, but at the end of the day, you have to invest on the vibes of the founder. Vibe capitalism is alive in Silicon Valley. And the same should be true of investing time, money, and energy in growing your social media.

Let’s say you’re newish to posting on Twitter.

You’re getting a few likes per post, not seeing much growth or revenue. You look at the stats and say “I need to give up, the data says this is pointless and I should switch to making TikToks”. So you switch to TikTok. You think you’re being smart and “data-driven”, but meanwhile you’ve only been tweeting consistently for like 3 months. In your head, you feel like that’s a long time, but it actually isn’t. There’s no statistical significance; you’re being statistically ignorant. 3 months later when you don’t blow up on TikTok, you’re gonna switch over to Instagram and then LinkedIn until you finally give up on that too and decide to become a Google ads guru because you don’t have the patience to do organic marketing. I see this shit time and time again.

If you’ve only been creating on a platform for a few months or even a year, there’s basically no data yet—so the question really is are you gonna put your faith into or meaningless data or put faith in yourself to be able to figure it out?

My podcast is the perfect example of following the vibes. For context, I just hired a full-time podcast producer 4 weeks ago. I’m getting like 200-1,000 views on YouTube, I’ve made exactly $0 so far, and Spotify has not offered me a $100M deal (fucking assholes). Do any of these data points matter? Fuck no. I’m having fun talking to cool people, and listeners are vibing with the pod and I’m vibing with it. Sure I’m losing money on the pod producer rn and the data says this is an unprofitable project, but fuck the data. I can afford to invest a little money right now on a long term investment. I’m vibing and I’m gonna keep on vibing until the whole world is vibing with me. Sounds stupid until you remember Joe Rogan started his podcast just vibing with his comedian friends.

No these comments don’t make me money, but damn these are some good vibes!!!! People give up before there’s enough data to make an intelligent decision on. When you’re early into building on a new social media platform, the real questions aren’t around data, the only question should be: are you having fun? Because if you’re having fun, you will have the energy to put in the reps and eventually figure out the platform and make money doing it. If you’re not having fun, you will get beat by someone who is having fun like me. If you don’t care about having fun, sure go do paid ads, but as someone who previously ran a Facebook ads agency in college, let me tell you it’s the most boring awful soul-sucking work in existence. That’s why I go so hard on organic marketing because I know how shitty the other side is. Organic marketing means making cool content with your friends, paid ads means staring at dashboards like an anxious crack addict. Personally, I know which sounds more fun to me. Your goal with social media should be to find your type of content creation that always looks like:

Thanks to the scale of the internet, any type of creator can make millions from doing dance TikToks to recording intellectual 4-hour podcasts to yes of course making memes. There’s countless options. I can’t tell you which is “right” or “the best” for you. It really depends on your personality. All can work, the internet is so fucking big and there’s enough cucstomers on every single platform from X to TikTok to Reddit to yes even Truth Social. All that matters is you’ve gotta do what is most fun to you and you can do every single day without quitting when it’s not making money yet. 

The reason I can make so much content and new businesses all the time is because I make the stuff that is fun to me. It looks like work to other people, but it’s fun to me. I find writing fun. I find making memes fun. I find running my community fun. I don’t like debating people about politics so I don’t do that. I don’t like filming dance videos on TikTok. I don’t like writing boring marketing case studies so I don’t do that. I do what I find fun and I post it on the internet. Because the internet is massive, you will find people who vibe with whatever you find fun. You don’t need to not have fun to make money (this is the true philosophy of Memes Make Millions). If you don’t know what style of content is fun to make for you, then you only have 1 option: fuck around and find out.

Try making different styles of content about different topics. This is how I figured out what is fun to me and what isn’t. In early days of this blog, I wrote a bunch of long marketing case studies because I thought that’s how you make money as a writer online. I hated writing them, so I stopped and doubled down on writing what I find fun, and I’m making more money than ever because I’m following what I find fun! Meanwhile, I have a friend who loves writing long brand case studies and he’s making fantastic money too. Both options work, the main thing is are you having fun and can you do it everyday? Do what’s fun, stop doing what feels like torture, and repeat this iterative process of fucking around and finding until you die. Seriously. I implore you to never stop fucking around and finding out. I’m 150+ weeks straight in my newsletter and it still feels like day 1 because I’m constantly fucking around and finding out. The second you stop fucking around, the second your motivation is gone and your business is fucked.

Never stop fucking around and finding out.

Never stop having fun.

My adventures this week

I had 2 brilliant internet-famous guests on my pod this week. Both are very different, both extremely value-packed. Pick your poison.

1. The first is with author Nat Eliason about his new book Crypto Confidential, his writing process, and how he goes viral on BookTok.

2. The second is with Oren John about all things luxury brand building: luxury software, luxury newsletters, and the Soho House of nerds.

Tech Memes of the Week

Thanks for reading nerds.

Create some cool shit this week.

Jason “The Memelord” Levin

Head of Growth @ Product Hunt, Author of Memes Make Millions