So, you've just joined Pagebound. You're bright-eyed and full of wonder for this marvelous world that doesn't show you things like follower counts but—you've just learned—gives you points for making Quality Posts™.

"But how do I make Quality Posts™, Average User @deathprobably?"

Great question, kid. I have no idea, but I think it has something to do with pine trees. Literature, amiright?

I might not know anything about trees, but from my days spent on Reddit (NYSE:RDDT), I DO have some experience with farming, which in my (barely) one month here on Pagebound, I think could be easily and simply applied to make this the feudal-agrarian internet hellscape it was always intended to be. You’re welcome. Please, hold the applause.

The most important thing when starting out with farming is to determine the lay of the land and the resources you have at your disposal. The climate and soil aren’t right for every kind of post, and we want to make sure we have a healthy harvest of updoots—I mean upvotes. The better matched to its environment a post is, the higher its yield, and all of us know from listening to Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, higher yields are good.

Typically.

Usually.

(...)

Trust me. We want yields.

Now that you’ve taken a gander, made a list, and checked it twice, you should have an idea of the kinds of topics and things that will generate ✨Emotional Reactions ✨from your fellow users. This is a critical step, because as a potent fertilizer, this is what ensures the growth of a healthy crop of upvotes.

In case anyone in our audience was raised on 4chan or Twitter, some common emotions that can be evoked in other people include happiness, sadness, and anger. Happiness and sadness are the most difficult to utilize properly because it can be a lot of effort to think up funny jokes or compelling ways to talk about egregious tragedies that won’t also be downvoted into oblivion when people accidentally misunderstand you. They also do the least amount to assist you in developing reach which is a very critical term to understand in farming.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this yet, but when people comment on a post, it appears as a card in their followers’ feeds and lets them be nosy and snoop on what they’re saying. Tea is a very lucrative kind of crop to be sure, and so you want to make sure that people want to leave a comment on what you have to say to maximize how many feeds they’ll end up appearing in.

Jokes may get you a “ha ha” or even an “I’m gagged”, and kicked puppy posts might generate a “thoughts and prayers”, but then the upvotes are going to go to those posters instead of you! The nerve! Piggybacking off your creative genius with such low-effort drivel.

To get the most bang for your buck out of your time spent crafting a post, you’re going to want to elicit anger. Everyone has an opinion about something, and if you phrase things just right, people will want to upvote you, then reply to expand on it, and then upvote you some more.

This is our best-case scenario because not only do we get one of those precious upvotes, but it also gets all their followers to pile in. Remember: we don’t have to read what people say. Their followers will do that for us. We just need to provide the perfect stage for their monologue.

The next step is to find a topic that’s easy to have a good opinion about but that might spark fighting in the comment section. It also can’t be something people are tired of talking about. Let’s get a good example going. Ahem.

I just finished listening to a book, but my boyfriend said that it’s not real reading, and I think he’s wrong. Of course audiobooks are real books! That’s why they have the word book in them. Duh! But it got me thinking… what do you guys think? Should I not be counting audiobooks in my yearly challenge?

Now, what’s working for this post?

Well, for starters, we have a hot topic (“do audiobooks count as reading?”) that’s circulated on other websites and shown high yields on posts there, so it may be familiar but not fully beaten to death explored on Pagebound. This is the core idea that will generate opining.

We’ve also added a lever that can assist with sparking additional outrage by mentioning the contrary opinion of an absent third party. This is absolute gold, because it allows you to take no responsibility for what was said and seem the victim of some monster with a contrary opinion to your potential commenters that they can use as an imaginary punching bag when replying.

Finally, it includes a specific question, which will help prompt people to know that you’re looking for a reply. This can significantly improve your engagement because you’ll get people who know you want a reply replying instead of people who think you don’t want an opinion but plan to give it anyways. It makes for a more fruitful experience.

One you’ve written and looked over your post to ensure it’ll create maximum ✨Emotional Reactions ✨, you just hit submit, and then you wait.

Just like real farming, the waiting is the hardest part, but what you can do in the meantime is tend to your comment section. These one-off comments and chains usually won’t get as many upvotes as your main post, but hey—an upvote is an upvote, right? Not gonna leave those badboys on the table in this economy.

You will get people who jump on to your post to sub-farm (which is an entirely other post, but can be quite lucrative if you’re willing to be subject to the whims of other users making posts you can get mileage out of) but you should be nice to them. They’re bringing their followers to your post, after all, and what else did you expect?

I’ve shared everything I can so you can now be a Farming Master®. Godspeed, and happy farming!

[Legal Disclaimer: This is intended to be satire and not a call out post. It always is that deep, and it’s good to question if the content you’re interacting with is intentionally karma-farming more than it’s arising from sincere engagement. A website like this is an ecosystem—emphasis on system—and it’s easy to upset its delicate balance, which is likely why we’re always seeing reminders about etiquette and keeping posting “high quality.” Only YOU can prevent forest fires. The forest here being our beautiful evergreen forums. All the love to you guys, and especially everyone who laid the foundations for a place I’ve been enjoying so much.]

Is it cheating to include books I read for my PhD as part of my yearly challenge? (nb: id love to be able to add books here that are not on goodreads since lots of academic books are nonexistent there!)

Hi, I’m about to dip my toes into Homer and I in general plan to read more classic literature in 2026, and I was struggling to decide which version of the Iliad I should start with. I’m a newbie but I’m not intimidated by complicated translations, however if there is something more accessible for first timers and is still considered a quality translation I’d prefer to go with that. I’ve heard Fagles is quite easy to use as a starting point and most pros do not recommend Wilson’s translations, but I’m just on the fence.

If anyone has any recommendations or tips for getting into epic poetry and other works of Ancient Greece (is there something I should read before getting into Iliad/Odyssey ?), please feel free to share your thoughts ! Thank you 💫

Something funny Like makes you LAUGH Almost all the books I have can send me into a depressive episode and I need to fix that

Since I don’t have the other books of Once Upon a Broke Heart, reading this one next. I don’t know what to expect, so going into this blindly 😆

I was wondering if User's will be able to manually add non-English books in the future? I'm able to keep tabs of my progress of them over on Storygraph, but it would be nice to be able to chat with people here about them in the future.

Edit to add: Apologies, I'm referring to languages that don't use the Latin alphabet

I've been thinking of running one within a local volunteer run group that's done them before. Apparently, theirs have fizzled out due to lack of attendees and because it was too much work.

So... for those of you who run one or are in one, what should I expect and have you had any issues? How do you keep people interested?

Have yall read a series where every book was amazing? Like either four or five stars? I'm on book 7 of the Cowboy Colony Mail-Order Brides series and every single book has been amazing for me and I was wondering has happened to anyone else??