If you pay attention to the best news headline and media sensations, you will find that every event that goes viral is, at its root, a conflict or debate of some sort.

Viral content is always composed of two opposing sides, dueling for supremacy.

Separating a conflict into two viciously conflicting viewpoints taps into the human need to be a part of tribe. Everyone wants to associate with others who agree with them. The more people you have around you that agree with your ideas, the more “right” you feel you are.

And the more that the other side is “wrong”, the more you feel compelled to “correct” them.

Hence, the tendency for people to divide themselves into opposing groups.

Take for example the whole white and gold / blue and black dress phenomenon that blew up the internet a few years ago.

Blue and black, or white and gold?

This was a huge sensation — the only way anyone didn’t hear about this one would be if they were in total social isolation with zero internet connection. I would say that this debate reached a point of social saturation that could not be beat by even the most mind blowing of CNN breaking new stories or the most vicious of Trump tweets.

So why did this explosion take place?

Well I’ve done a bit of an analysis on this and found that the exact factors which caused the dress phenomenon to skyrocket to legendary status are the same factors which can cause any issue to be looked at and supported.

These factors all stem from the basic idea that human beings are attracted to conflict, but specifically they are:

The more opposed the two sides of a conflict are, the more attention that conflict will attract. The more each side of a conflict is relatable, the more attention that conflict will attract. The more sides there are to a conflict above 2, the less attention that conflict will generate.

On point one — the two sides in conflict must be very opposed to each other. The more dissimilar they are, the better the conflict itself will be. The dress was either blue and black or white and gold. Two very different color schemes which should not have been able to be mistaken for each other.

Republicans and Democrats each take a different side of every issue. Not all members of each party fall in line with the official party position, but the parties themselves are exactly opposed to one another.

Atheists versus creationists is a good fight — very dissimilar worldviews. Atheists versus reform Jews? Not so much.

Anarchists vs Fascists? Great fight, everyone tunes in. Green party vs Democrats? There are some contentions there but you’re going to get low viewership on that one.

White supremacists vs Muslims? Not only are these forces totally opposed but this battle echoes imagery of the historic Crusades. Big attraction. White Nationalists vs Neo-Nazis? Different aims to be sure, but the optics are too similar for anyone to care.

Good fights which garner a lot of attention, and thereby grab more supporters for each side, are the ones who feature teams that are the most different to each other.

Similar viewpoints fighting it out are only interesting to those who have a more nuanced view of the field, and can understand why the two forces are more different than they appear to an outsider.

Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi (two long time Democrat politicians) duking it out might be very interesting to a lifelong Democrat party member. To a Libertarian…not so much. The interest in such a matchup is directly proportionate to the degree of difference one can perceive between them.

To the second point — each side of a big conflict needs to be relatable to the audience you are trying to attract. The side you want to appear as “good” needs to align with things your audience believes is “good”. The enemy needs to align with things your audience believes to be “bad”. You thereby divide the two sides into a friendly tribe and an enemy tribe, clearly showing the audience who they are supposed to be in support of.

Duels which are too far in the abstract and contain no struggle of interest to your audience will be largely ignored.

Republican vs Democrat will hardly matter to an entrepreneur who works 80 hours a week trying to get his new startup off the ground.

Yankees vs Red Sox doesn’t matter to a Canadian hockey fan.

Raving American patriots might care about passing the next gun rights bill, but not about gun smuggling in Cambodia.

Relevancy is key.

The last point to remember about the art of conflict promotion is that people generally are less attracted to conflicts that contain many sides, all in opposition to each other. The more complicated the alliances, the less interest you are going to get and the less people are going to pick a side to support.

The ideal is one large group pitted against another large group — with as little division within these groups as possible.

Think Axis vs Allies — the whole world was at war, but we boiled it down to two sides. Sure, each component country had their own aims, but for propaganda purposes — there was only one enemy.

Remember the whole Assad regime issue? The Syrian civil war?

That whole situation blew up back in 2013 when president Bashar al-Assad supposedly used chemical weapons on rebel opposition forces (a big no-no in the international community).

But from a western point of view, other than the chemical weapons thing, this was a conflict where it was almost impossible to determine who the “good guys” were. The people who opposed the Assad regime weren’t necessarily friendly with western countries, and Assad was doing things that made it pretty clear he was a power hungry dictator rather than a true representative of the people.

There were many players involved in this struggle, some lending actual soldiers to the cause, some just contributing weapons and funding. The Assad regime received military support from Russia and Iran. Qatar and Saudi Arabia gave weapons to the rebels. Each side was calling the other “terrorists”, and each side was committing human rights violations against the other.

Even each “side” was made up of a conglomerate of forces, each with their own set of alliances and objectives.

It was an absolute mess politically, and even though many Americans knew that there was something going on over there, very few knew what they were supposed to believe or who they were supposed to support. It was a public relations nightmare.

Because the set up was so complicated, and there were so many different factions all with their own agendas, the war did not gain the traction it otherwise could have. There was no massive support for either side, and as a result there was much less international intervention than there could have been.

The lesson here — make the conflict a simple one. When people know clearly who stands for what and who is allied with who, it makes picking a side that much easier.

The exception to this rule is if you are working for the “bad guys”. If your team is the one that is going to be seen in a bad light if the truth got out, it is better to create so many interrelations between the various participatory parties that outsiders will have a very difficult time following what is really going on.

The average onlooker won’t want to put in the effort to decipher it all and so will move on to battles that have clearer aims and allegiances.

This international political confusion in this case may actually have been an intentional psyop on the part of Assad’s PR team. Who knows. It ended up working in his favor — he’s still in power.

Using these 3 rules, you can create conflicts that attract attention and drive the public interest.

Watch out for this technique being used by the media. Its the reason why news is so often seen as “divisive” or even “stressful” — its always about this side against that side. That’s what drives views, and as a result, collects supporters.