There have always been the "get rich quick" fads that even millennials understand the fallacy of. Even the most liberal of people understand that, unless you're born rich, getting rich takes a lot of hard work. Some people might work hard their whole lives and still not get rich, but, then again, those people have a better chance at getting rich through a lifetime than getting rich through the night.

However, wealth is different from fame. Fame is all about getting people's attention, not people's money, and, in the capitalistic hegemony of our world, we tend to let our attention go to some very unworthy items. We would rather spend our time making money than discovering what the best way to spend it is. Therefore, fame can literally happen overnight, and, in our meme culture, the timeline of fame is getting more and more fragmented. Case in point, being famous is not a meritocracy.

And it's interesting because, when you look at student-run opinion websites, it seems like a great example of meritocracy: no prerequisites, maximum creative freedom, and it gets shared on social media, the truly "free" media, be that as it may. So we meet a crossroads when we see a meritocratic platform that meeting a very fixed, disparaging system. What is that system?

We live in the "Me" generation. We really do. Social media, as Bo Burnham said, is simply a way to perform all the time in front of everyone. We like to self-indulge and specifically self-promote. Take Instagram, for example. If you go on Instagram on a Saturday night, you'll see people having fun. It looks like their lives are going great, even though--even you know, even they know--it's quite the opposite. However, you really don't see the other ninety percent. You don't see that person waiting at the bus stop for twenty minutes trying to find the bus or forgetting to hand in their paper on time because it goes against the idea of self-promotion. You want to make yourself look cool in front of your "friends" at the risk of saying what you really feel. And it's really a shame. I think this is why people talk about being "connected" on social media while actually staying apart. There might be some things that you really feel that other people really feel, but both of you are too scared to get it out there.

As much as it is a self-promotion generation, we do live in a self-entitlement generation, but the way I'll apply it won't be that conventional. That ten percent of us partying is rewarding ourselves for doing that ten percent. Other people reward us for doing that ten percent. However, there is that ninety percent missing, and that is when these articles come in.

Since it's finals season, I'll use an example from that realm. You've probably seen articles recycled around your news feed that goes something like "Finals weeks as told by The Office". Every single one of these articles consists of fragments that start with "when you" and then describes an action or emotion reminiscent of finals week that is generic enough to be shared with every college student in the country. The reason why these articles are so popular is because it quenches more of that 100% that can't be filled with Instagram pictures of being at parties. We want to feel rewarded for our struggles, so these articles give us a chance to feel like we matter--and Michael Scott yelling keeps it lighthearted5

And I've found that the more relatable you get, the more successful--albeit niche--your article gets. If you dig into the deep caverns of people's relatability, they feel more compelled to share it. And sharing it is key because part of the idea of sharing it is that you have someone to share it with that will like the article. If that person can also feel that same way, that's what makes the niche market so fertile.

I'll give you a personal example. It was August, and I'd been writing for Odyssey for about nine months at that time. I had improved immensely, and I was tackling some very interesting topics, but I had failed to break thirty shares. I'm not sure where exactly I thought up with this idea (although they'll probably make it up in my biopic), but I decided to write an article ranking all the pizza places in my town. It would be a fun experiment, and, at that point, I knew it would get a lot of shares. Sure enough, it reached 1700, my highest share count to-day by about 1660 shares. And the writing was right on the wall when it came to why it was so popular. People from my town were sharing it on facebook and commenting their friends' names. Unfortunately for me, it was mostly commenting how awful the list was, but they were doing it regardless. What a joy it must be for getting rewarded for your own pizza places in your own little town! But something being relatable could also mean something else, and it took me this pizza article to understand it.

People would rather have an idea they have been shown in an article rather than be given a new idea. You saw that from the plethora of Trump articles this year. There would be no new, thought-provoking approaches to taking him down. No. It would simply be the most obvious take-downs. It was the equivalent to a crappy comedians making fun of Chris Christie for his weight. But people like that validation, that what they're thinking is important, is smart, because it means that they're smart.

Let's not underscore the "instant gratification" factor here. If you see something you already know, you might as well not read the article, or, if you do, there's nothing really new to ponder over. In any case, it makes it more share-worthy and read-worthy. It's a weird, twisted world we live in that it's the more familiar things to us that we try to pursue further. If I wrote an article going "Why Some Articles Go Viral And Other's Don't", it doesn't have as much of an immediate impact as "Why F-boys Need To Be Stopped." The most viral articles are more news articles than anything else in that the title is the most thought-provoking, and, honestly, worthy part of the story. It's a shame, though, because I've gained the most clarity from articles that did not totally draw me in at first but guided me, and my greatest revelations came through paragraphs, slowly building up, not simply a headline.

And it's not like these headlines are telling us what we don't already know because the most popular articles are of things we already know. It's really in our blood at this point, biased news that helps fortify our worldview. We know MSNBC and Fox News are partisan, and yet we still watch our preferred one anyway.

So these articles are just another way to get our fix for our 100%, but that really is not where it stops. We get gratified for our 100% in so many ways that we don't even think about. Freemium games like Clash of Clans congratulate us for literally letting the time pass by while Pokémon Go congratulated us for walking...anywhere. Soon enough, our entire 100% will be congratulated, and nothing we will do will have purpose anymore other than the fact that it will be broadcasted, which is why I leave with this Bo Burnham quote: "if you can learn to live without an audience, you should do it."