Look What You Did
Convert casual fans into evangelists by putting the spotlight on them, not on your results.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 94%
This is the editorial rule that made the Exploding Kittens campaign self-perpetuating. The input is a pile of community submissions; the mechanism is a deliberate grammatical inversion in the update — you did this, not we achieved this — supported by the actual images. The output is casual backers reclassifying themselves as members of a community that is more powerful together, and continuing to work on your behalf.
Origin
Lee learned it in alternate reality games, where he says he was beaten over and over with the mantra community first, community first, they are so much smarter than you are, learn to entertain a crowd. When his own first update draft came back reading look what happened, he immediately recognised it as the wrong message.
Core principles
- 01Conversion from casual fan to superfan happens when you shine a light on the fan, not when you report your own progress.
- 02There is a decisive grammatical difference between look what happened and look what you did — the first is facts, the second is authorship.
- 03You have to actually read the submissions; you cannot fake recognition at scale by assuming what people sent in.
- 04Evidence must be shown, not described: put the actual photos in the update.
- 05Recognition is what makes the community's own theory of itself true — we are more powerful together, so let's keep working together.
- 06Done well, this replaces the function of a PR and marketing department, because superfans proselytise on your behalf.
- 07Removing yourself from the story is the mechanism, not modesty.
How to run it
- 1
Read the submissions for real
Lee is explicit that you cannot make assumptions here — you actually need to read through the emails, because the conversion process is shining a light on the people who sent them.
Pro tip Even with imperfect tracking, harvest enough specific submissions to fill an update.
Watch out Assuming there are some Batmen in a tub in there is fine for unlocking a reward and fatal for converting a fan.
- 2
Write the update, then check its grammar
The team's first draft opened with look what happened. Lee's reaction was that this was the wrong message — it read as facts about outcomes rather than credit for actions.
Pro tip Highlight the subject of every sentence. If it is we, us or the campaign, rewrite it.
- 3
Invert to look what you did
Rewrite so the community is the actor. Nothing to do with us, nothing to do with just facts — spotlight on you.
Watch out This only works if the community genuinely did the thing. Manufactured credit reads as condescension.
- 4
Put the evidence in the update
Include the pictures right there. The proof of authorship has to be visible, not summarised, for people to recognise themselves in it.
Pro tip Community members hunting for their own submission is itself a distribution event.
- 5
Name the collective identity and issue the next call
The reaction Lee describes is people concluding we are more powerful together, let's all keep working together. Give that energy an immediate next challenge to spend itself on.
Pro tip This is the ARG lesson applied commercially: the community's belief in its own capability is the renewable resource.
Watch out A recognition update with no next action lets the converted energy dissipate.
In the wild
After backers had flooded the campaign with photos, poems, videos and street stunts, Lee's team drafted an update opening with look what happened. Reading it back, Lee realised the framing was wrong — it presented the results as facts, as something the campaign had achieved. The rewrite opened with look what you did, with the community's own pictures embedded directly beneath. Lee's account is that this is when people started to convert, recognising themselves as a community that was more powerful together.
→ Casual backers converted into superfans who kept generating challenges, buzz and orders for the remaining twenty days.
Lee's alternate reality game background trained him on exactly this. The central premise of an ARG is that together you are stronger and as a community you can become extraordinary versions of yourselves. The games work by writing a complete narrative, breaking it into pieces and hiding those pieces across the real world — on the internet, on phone lines, on fax lines, through live actors — so that only a coordinated crowd can perform what his mentor Jordan Weisman called internet archaeology and reassemble the vase.
→ A decade of conditioning that Lee could deploy the moment Kickstarter's single money lever proved insufficient.
Common mistakes
Reporting your own milestone
Look what happened is the natural way to write an update and the reason most updates convert nobody. It positions the audience as spectators to your achievement rather than as the cause of it.
Skipping the reading because the volume is overwhelming
Lee's team could not process ten thousand emails a second and reasonably assumed the thresholds were met. But he draws a hard line: assumption is fine for unlocking, and useless for converting, because the conversion is the act of seeing a specific person.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders and creators with an engaged community they want to convert into a distribution channel.
Not ideal for
Audiences that have not actually done anything yet, where the framing would read as hollow flattery.
From the transcript
“you actually do need to read through those emails because the conversion process is shining a light on them”
“the first draft of that of that update said look what happened and we realized whoa that's the wrong message it has to say look…”
“community first community first they're so much smarter than you are learn to entertain a crowd that's what this is all about”
From the episode
#653: Elan Lee, Co-Creator of Exploding Kittens — How to Raise Millions on Kickstarter, Deconstructing Mega-Successes, Secrets of Game Design, The Power of Positive Constraints, The Delights of Craftsmanship, and The Art of Turning Fans into Superfans