For a year or two in the early 2010s, a certain genre of cheesy, irresistibly uplifting headline was unavoidable on Facebook. You know the trope – someone died in an inspiring way, a potentially bad situation led to an unlikely friendship, a dog saved someone’s life. Followed, almost always, by “You’ll never believe what happened next.”

It was a sure bet to make content go viral, and traffic-hungry publishers flooded Facebook with curiosity-gap headlines. A host of sites dedicated to churning out viral clickbait---Viralnova, Distractify, Diply, Upworthy---flourished.

You’ll definitely believe what happened next. The format quickly devolved into a cringe-inducing punchline. In response, Facebook tweaked the algorithm that determines which stories appear in its News Feed, and traffic to most viral publishers plummeted. Some sold, others changed strategies, others folded. Now, the easiest way to go viral on Facebook is with political news designed to provoke outrage and fear.

That is, unless you are the one viral publisher that has defied the algorithm and thrived. Against all odds, Bored Panda, a blog started by a Lithuanian photographer in 2009, remains among the top publishers on Facebook. As its competition has faded, Bored Panda’s growth has accelerated. In October, Bored Panda says it hit 116 million unique visitors, up from an average of 17 million per month last year. The company pays to promote some stories, though it attributes much of the recent growth to organic traffic.

Much of that traffic comes through Facebook, where Bored Panda’s October posts on average generated more likes, shares, and other reactions than any other English-language news site, according to NewsWhip, a news analytics provider. Bored Panda had more than three times as many engagements per post as its closest competitor, conservative news site Daily Wire. In total engagements, Bored Panda ranked second only to Foxnews.com, and ahead of major news organizations like NBC, the Daily Mail, the New York Times, and CNN.

It’s a surprising ranking for a 40-person site associated with the early days of blogging---a throwback to when the Internet was less an addictive, stress-inducing reflection of the ugliness of modern life, and more a place to kill time when we were bored. With its simple, wholesome tales of ornery animals and feel-good photo projects, Bored Panda has flourished by sidestepping the outrage. NewsWhip attributes Bored Panda’s success to its light-hearted focus, noting that visual-heavy stories about dog-paw tattoos and horse mustaches were among the most shared stories across Facebook in September.

As many digital publishers struggle to live up to high valuations and expectations of hypergrowth, Bored Panda is notable for shunning outside investment. The site expects to record $20 million to $30 million in revenue this year from banner ads, content recommendations, and a few branded-content deals, generating more profit than it knows what to do with, according to founder Tomas Banišauskas.

Fewer Articles, But Better

Like many people watching the explosion of blogging in 2007, Banišauskas saw an opportunity. He and a classmate wanted to copy the success of other blogs, so they started a blog called “Million Dollar Plan.” They scoured the web for stories of online success, blogged about it on a Wordpress site, and ran some Google Adsense ads. “We didn’t know much, but by teaching others we could teach ourselves,” he says. Eventually they started earning a few dollars a day from the ads. “It was like a miracle,” he says. “You were putting something on the internet and making money.”

At the time, Banišauskas was a freelance photographer for weddings and TV commercials. He was more interested in the visual arts than online business models, so he created blogs around art, advertising, and architecture. The visual content got a strong response; in one month his sites collectively garnered around a million visitors. That led him to strike out on his own, creating Bored Panda, a blog dedicated to fighting boredom with art and positive stories, from his Vilnius, Lithuania, flat in 2009.