March 14, 2014 CHARISMA MAGAZINE
Steve Strang, Founder, Publisher
It happened around Valentine’s Day, when loving couples are supposed to be choosing gifts for one another. Instead, many were reading—and sharing—Lee Grady’s Fire in My Bones column entitled “10 Men Christian Women Should Never Marry.” It went massively viral, shared nearly 2 million times on charismamag.com alone.
The question is, why?
As mentioned, Lee wrote the column the week of Valentine’s Day, so the timing may have had something to do with it. However, he had no idea 2 million people would read it and that nearly 1.5 million would share it.
I’ve known Lee for more than 30 years. I know he has a solid marriage. I know he mentors a lot of young men and that the subject of marriage often comes up. He’s definitely got God’s wisdom on the matter. But was it just his wisdom that caused the rush to share it far and wide?
At first my staff thought it had been picked up by secular sites in order to make fun of Christians. When it had been shared “only" 300,000 times, one of the editors emailed me and said, “I’m 90 percent sure it's a secular site driving this, given the few comments on our own site. It’s been difficult to track the real source because it’s on FB.”
Now we’re not so sure. The comments on the site are almost all from Christians. It’s as if there is a deep desire from Christians who are so disappointed in people due to addictions, divorce, compromised standards and so forth that they resonate with a father figure like Lee telling women things their dad or pastor should have told them.
Why else would it be shared so many times on Facebook? People making fun don’t really share items at that level. If you missed the article, you can read it here.
Lee confirmed most reactions came from Facebook when I asked him about the reaction. “No secular outfits contacted me, but many Christian groups did,” he said. “Also, I got tons of private messages, mostly from women wanting advice because they had married some of the men I warned women not to marry!”
Lee got a lot of requests after the first article came out, and a week later, he wrote “8 Women Christian Men Should Never Marry.” That article also went viral, but at a lower velocity—only 230,000 shares.
So it’s your turn. Chime in. Tell us what you think. Did you learn anything? Is Lee wrong? Or maybe you can answer the question I tried to answer here: Why did an article on the type of men Christian women shouldn't marry go viral with 2 million shares?
Steve Strang is the founder and publisher of Charisma. Follow him on Twitter at @sstrang or Facebook (stephenestrang).
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