I've always been of the belief that if you want an idea to die, then you need to stay silent. I'm not talking about the situations where one needs to take a stand against political injustices. No, I'm talking about the book that you want to see removed from the shelves… or the bit of misinformation that needs to be buried… or the embarrassing events that happened the other night.

The fastest way to ensure that anyone knows about whatever it is that you wish would disappear and never resurface is to tell others about it. And if you share it on social media, it spreads even faster.

In today's post, I want to talk about some of the instances that I've encountered over the years where people just didn't know how to keep their mouths shut, spreading that tidbit of information that they wanted to hide because of it.

Even negative publicity is publicity

I will never understand why protesters feel the need to be vocal and violent about certain books, because all they are doing is bringing public attention to that book.

Let's think about this for a bit.

On a frequent enough basis, I'll see a list of recently banned books. These lists are put out there by people who are protesting against the bans, deliberately trying to bring those banned books to everyone's attention. And more often than not, at least one of the books on those lists will quickly move into the bestseller category, garnishing more attention to the book.

And among my writing buddies, we jokingly say that it's our goal to become a banned book, just because of the extended reach that banned books often experience.

You want a specific example?

Think back to when The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown was released in 2003. It wasn't Dan Brown's first novel, but it was the one that propelled him onto the international stage. And the reason it took off? The book was publicly denounced by many Christian denominations as an attack on the Catholic church and highly criticized by scholars for its historical and scientific inaccuracies. Even Pope John Paul II (the pope in office in 2003) had made a statement against the book, declaring the book inappropriate reading for Catholics.

I remember it so clearly when a friend of mine excitedly entered the room announcing to all (in a giddy and laughing manner) that she was "committing a cardinal sin." She then went on to explain about the negative reception that The Da Vinci Code had received from the church… and she happily pulled a copy of the book out of her bag.

Until then, I hadn't even heard of the book. But such negative publicity had clearly worked in the favor of Dan Brown and his book, because now it's a piece of thriller literary history.

Yet, if the Catholic church had remained silent about Dan Brown's book, the book would have come and gone, and I would have never known about it.

A more recent example can be found in the form of Salman Rushdie. In 2022, he was violently stabbed as a form of a protest against his books and his views. Prior to 2022, he was just a name that I didn't know anything about. As soon as I heard about the stabbing, I had only one reaction: "Now, I want to read this writer to see what view would be met with such violent reaction."

It was such a negative event, but it had a significant influence on the writer's reach. I didn't even know who Salman Rushdie was prior to this.

Now, I know, and now, I'm interested. (In all honesty, I still haven't read his books, because I find his writing style so dry and boring.)

Seriously, the protesters that want the books to die and to not gain public attention need to learn that they shouldn't draw attention to the book (or the writer) in anyway—positive or negative. It might seem counter-intuitive, but trust me, even the negative publicity is still publicity.

SEO algorithms favor shares and clicks over likes

I see this negative publicity effect when it comes to websites, blog posts, and social media too. Someone will say something in a blog or on their social media feeds that is highly… well… ick… and the protest engine starts.

The number of posts stating that something is wrong and should be placed on the fire to burn dramatically increases… but those posts also include a link to the original offending post. The curious nature of people drives them to click on the link… and they might share the protesting post with their own followers, spreading the original link even further.

At that point, the SEO algorithms kick in, seeing that this offensive link (whatever it might be) is being shared far and wide, so the algorithms see the trending post and share it even further… ultimately leading to more shares and more clicks… and a higher SEO ranking.

It's a perpetual cycle. And the only way to stop it is to stop sharing or clicking on the original post.

Google, Facebook, and all the other "trending" algorithms that exist don't care if a post is garnishing positive or negative reactions. All they see is that the post is gaining a lot of traffic—so let's just boost that traffic further.

Are you starting to see why sometimes it's better to just stay silent?

It's not just the internet that favors the negative

But it's not just the SEO and publishing publicity that favor the negative things in life. Many of us have an evil streak that laughs at the misfortune of others. If this wasn't true, then we wouldn't have all those comedy films with the actors walking into doors or standing in the middle of a pile of dung that has been dumped over their heads… or being in a port-a-loo that takes off flying in a strong wind.

Just think about all the embarrassing things that might have happened in your life (or your loved one's life) that you can't stop laughing about. Yet, the story is spread every time it's told.

Recently, my husband made the mistake of telling everyone he worked with how he thought that the dark stuff under his fingernails was chocolate… only to discover it was shit. Actual shit. As in cat poo. I think you can imagine what happened just from that short description.

But I wasn't the one to tell the family or his work colleagues what happened. I wasn't the one who harped on it for hours, making my daughter and I laugh so hard that we were crying.

I will admit that I was the one to highlight to him that whenever he uses the statement "This tastes like shit," he now has a frame of reference to compare things to—something that even made my husband laugh as he was trying to tell me that the situation wasn’t funny and that he couldn’t laugh about it yet (yet, he was crying laughing). And yes, I'm the one sharing this hilarity with the world, but he was the one to open his mouth to dare me to include it into one of my stories.

Seriously, if he had just kept quiet about it—and not tell anyone about the dark stuff under his nails that found his mouth—then no one would have known about it, not even me. But no, he doesn't know how to stay silent.

So, I'm going to make the suggestion again: If you don't want people to talk about something, then stay silent about it. Simple as that.