for those who don’t remember, “mole interest” was an experiment I did 2 years ago because I wanted to test what causes tags to go trending on tumblr. My hypothesis was that all it takes is one (1) post blowing up in an established tag to make the entire tag trend.
I had randomly generated 2 words, which is where “mole interest” came from. I failed to consider that by generating a new tag, it wouldn’t have had enough posts already in it to prove what I now call “the mole interest effect”.
But now it does.
In 2023, we said “fuck it” a la mythbusters and ended up doing whatever it took to get #mole interest to trend. And it did. And it happened to be September 11th that day, and we managed to get #mole interest to trend ABOVE #9/11.
So, in the name of science, I ask you to reblog just this post. Let’s put the mole interest effect to the test.
you guys have gotten this to 20k in 2 and a half hours that’s insane
it’s still not trending! so far this could mean:
20k is not enough for one post to make a tag trend, but it could be possible with more notes
All the other trending tags have more activity in general at the moment, but the mole interest effect could work on a particularly slow day
I was wrong, and the mole interest effect isn’t a thing! It happens sometimes. But a disproven hypothesis doesn’t mean the experiment “failed”! Being wrong is still a learning opportunity. You guys are helping me collect (mole) interesting data regardless!
