Maxine Sewell, hanged by her camera strap near a city bridge, attracted much interest. The morbid account of her coming to her accidental demise appealed to hundreds of readers.
But none of the tragedy was real.
I keep scratching my head about what makes social media tick. I write many well-crafted posts, mixing fact and dark fiction with adventure. Once every so often, something excites readers. But if I write a sensationalised lie and turn it into what looks like a legitimate news story, the traffic flies into the stratosphere.
It’s weird.
Perhaps people enjoy watching train wrecks. Forget love and hope. Show them a body in an embarrassing pose in a public place. Tell them she died during a thunderstorm while taking pictures of lightning. Sure. Why not? It’s totally plausible. It’s compelling.
We’re all just a little bit sick in the head, right?
The story tracked exceedingly well right after it went live. Dressed as a genuine news item and then shared as an unpaid Facebook post, over 700 people tuned in to the story in the hour that followed it. This was utterly unexpected and continued to power on throughout the day.
I was amazed and befuddled by the response. But the traffic stopped abruptly. Twelve hours later, the visitor numbers had not changed a bit.
In short, I’d say that cross-posting WordPress news-looking articles can generate high volumes of traffic quickly. But there’s a trade-off for writing fake news content. The post had no inertia and little followership.
A sequel with an identical structure was written a month later and posted but fell flat.
Better preparation before launching such a project might make better use of the traffic when it’s active.
What it showed is many readers have an unhealthy interest in the macabre.
Thank goodness! They’re my type of reader!
They are whom my novels are written.
Below is one of them, the one containing the original hanging story in its unabridged version. It’s free to download for a limited time.
-Michael (Author of Dark Fiction)
“Forman’s writing style is artful, with the protagonist Mitchell’s warped thought processes masterfully exposed. The author has a powerful and vivid command of language and his word pictures are stark and disturbingly real.”
– Linda J Bettenay, author of ‘Secrets Mothers Keep’ and ‘Wishes For Starlight’.
Discover more from Michael Forman – Author of Dark Fiction & Drama
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