The GOAT Economy: What a Joke Website Teaches Us About Attention, Engagement, and the Creator Grind
If you’ve spent more than a week managing a social media account, you know the real game isn’t about creating content—it’s about manufacturing relevance. We chase algorithm shifts, obsess over watch-time retention graphs, and repurpose a single 60-second video into six different assets because we know the system rewards volume and velocity. But every so often, a project comes along that strips the pretense away and reminds us what the internet actually runs on: not quality, not utility, but pure, unadulterated argument. That’s why I couldn’t look away from whoisthegoat.lol, a gloriously stupid and brutally honest experiment launched by Moss’Ab Mirande-Ney that landed on Product Hunt this week.
Forget the fancy analytics dashboards and the AI scheduling tools for a second. This is a site that ranks 45,000 characters—from Cleopatra to Minecraft’s Creeper—not by stats, not by cultural impact, but by one metric: how much cash someone is willing to throw down to keep them on top. It’s a marketplace for ego, a decentralized ledger of fanboy desperation. And for anyone who operates in the creator economy, it’s a masterclass in understanding the raw mechanics of engagement. It bypasses the “like and subscribe” plea and goes straight for the wallet, which is the ultimate signal of intent. We spend so much time trying to hack the algorithm, but this thing hacks human nature by turning a subjective debate into an objective, painful-to-watch auction. It’s the purest distillation of “engagement” I’ve seen in months, and it’s got me thinking about how we can borrow its brutal logic for our own content strategies—without the financial ruin.
The Problem: The Debate Is Dead, Long Live the Debate
The core problem this product solves isn’t a technical one; it’s a social one. The internet has argued “who’s the GOAT” for 20 years and never settled it. The maker’s thesis is that the debate itself is the product, but the lack of resolution is the friction. We’re all tired of the circular arguments in comment sections that go nowhere. The creator on the Product Hunt launch page sums it up perfectly: they removed the debate by making the board rank characters by “one thing only: how much someone paid to put them there.”
This is a profound insight for social media operators. We often confuse activity with progress. We see a comment section blowing up with “Team Ronaldo” vs. “Team Messi” and think, “Great, high engagement!” But that engagement is hollow—it’s a loop with no output. This tool capitalizes on that loop by monetizing it. The “highest bid holds the spot until someone pays more” mechanic is essentially a real-time, pay-to-win version of the algorithm. It doesn’t care about sentiment; it cares about currency.
In my own experience running accounts for clients in the sports and entertainment niche, I’ve seen this dynamic play out in the DMs. Fans don’t just want to argue; they want to prove their fandom. They want a tangible stake. A comment is a whisper; a dollar is a shout. This platform turns that shout into a ranking system. For creators, the lesson is clear: if you can find a way to let your audience put their money where their mouth is—even in a trivial, gamified way—you’re not just building a community, you’re building a hierarchy. And hierarchies, as painful as they are, drive retention far better than flat, democratic engagement.
How It Differs: Not Your Grandfather’s Polling Tool
We have a million tools for engagement. You can run a poll on X (formerly Twitter), you can use the sticker feature on Instagram Stories, or you can set up a full-blown voting app on LinkedIn. But all of those are fundamentally free and anonymous in their impact. They ask for a click, not a commitment. This tool, built solo on a platform called Murmell, is different.
It sits in a weird, fascinating space between a meme coin and a stock market. It’s not as complex as a prediction market like Polymarket, but it shares the same underlying psychology: the price is the opinion. When I tested similar tools—like those “bracket” apps for March Madness or fan-voting for music awards—the friction was always the login. People will click a button, but they won’t make an account. Here, the friction is the payment, but the reward is the permanent alteration of the public ledger. It’s the difference between voting in an election and buying a billboard. One is a civic duty; the other is a statement of wealth.
Compared to incumbents like Poll Everywhere or even the native features in Buffer’s analytics suite, this is a totally different beast. Those tools are about gathering data for the creator. This tool is about creating a spectacle for the viewer. The “OVERATED button” is the key feature here—it “does nothing to the rank and everything to the mood.” That’s a brilliant piece of design. It acknowledges the futility of the argument while giving the user a cathartic release. It’s the digital equivalent of yelling at a referee knowing full well it won’t change the call. That’s the kind of playful, anti-utility design that gets people to share screenshots, which is the real currency of social growth.
What Creators Can Borrow: The “Stake” Principle
So, how do we translate this into a practical content strategy? It’s not about making your audience pay to rank your videos—that’s a bridge too far for most communities. But the principle of the “highest bidder” is something we can all use. It’s about creating content that has a cost associated with participation, not just a time cost.
The “Skin in the Game” Poll
Instead of asking “Which thumbnail is better? A or B?”, flip the script. Say, “I’m going to post the version that gets the most ‘hype’ in the comments. If you pick wrong, you lose bragging rights.” The stakes are social, not financial, but they’re higher than a simple like. I did this last month when I was planning a series of YouTube Shorts. I gave my audience two completely different edit styles and told them the winner would get a full week of content dedicated to it. The comment section wasn’t just a list of “A” or “B”; it was a war zone of people defending their choice. The algorithm loved it because the dwell time on that post was insane.
The “Trash” Button as a Retention Hack
The OVERRATED button is a stroke of genius because it gives a voice to the contrarians. In my own tests of similar interactive tools, I’ve found that giving the audience a “negative” action—a way to express dissent without being toxic—actually increases overall engagement. It’s the “hate-watch” phenomenon. If you’re a creator, don’t just ask for praise. Ask “What did I get wrong?” or “What’s the worst take you have about this topic?” You’re inviting a specific type of engagement that is far more passionate than a generic compliment. It’s the difference between a guest on a talk show who agrees with everything and one who starts a fight. The latter gets more airtime.
The 45,000 Character List as a Content Mine
The sheer scale of the database—45,000 characters—is a content goldmine. For a social media operator, this is a reminder to think in systems, not just posts. Instead of asking “What should I post today?”, ask “What is the infrastructure I can build that generates conversations for months?” A simple “Ranked List” or “Leaderboard” that you update weekly can be a recurring series. I’ve seen indie founders do this with “Top 10 Tools for X” and update it monthly based on user feedback. It turns a one-off piece of content into a living document that people return to. The GOAT site is the ultimate version of this—a leaderboard that never sleeps.
Where the Math Breaks: The Dark Side of the Bid
Now, let’s get to the part where I put on my skeptic hat. This is a fun toy, but it’s not a sustainable business model, and there are some serious limitations. The maker claims it was “built in a day,” and it feels like it. The design is minimal, and the utility is almost non-existent. This is not a tool for serious community management. It’s a social experiment.
The Whale Problem
Any system based on “highest bid” suffers from the Whale Problem. In gaming, whales are the 1% of players who spend 99% of the money. On this site, that means the ranking isn’t a reflection of broad cultural consensus; it’s a reflection of who has the most disposable income and the most obsessive fandom. It’s not “who is the GOAT,” it’s “who has the richest fan.” This skews the data so hard that it becomes meaningless as a cultural metric. It’s the same reason why Hootsuite’s “best time to post” reports are often useless—they aggregate data across millions of accounts, which flattens the nuance of your specific niche. The GOAT site is the extreme end of that aggregation, where money is the only filter.
The Fade Factor
Novelty wears off. The “live since this morning” energy is high, but what happens in a month? The bids will slow down, the arguments will get stale, and the site will become a ghost town unless there’s a constant influx of new “characters” or events to react to. This is the classic problem with hype-driven platforms. It’s the same challenge we face on TikTok—you can go viral today and be forgotten tomorrow if you don’t have a retention strategy. The site needs a “season” or a “reset” mechanic to keep the market volatile. Otherwise, the top spots will just become frozen assets owned by the initial spenders.
Who This Is NOT For
If you’re a brand trying to build a serious community, do not use this as a template. If you’re a social media manager for a SaaS company, you cannot charge your users to rank features. This is a consumer toy. It’s for the meme lords, the shitposters, and the people who love the chaos of the internet. It’s a great case study, a fun Friday afternoon project, but it’s not a replacement for a proper engagement strategy. It’s a spark, not a fuel source.
The Creator Takeaway: The Algorithm Loves a Fight
My judgment call here is that the concept is worth more than the product. The execution is barebones, but the psychological insight is sharp. For me, the biggest takeaway is the “OVERATED” button. We spend so much time trying to optimize for positive sentiment—we delete negative comments, we hide dislikes, we curate our feeds to be a highlight reel. But the algorithm doesn’t care about sentiment; it cares about intensity. A heated argument keeps people on the platform longer than a warm hug.
When I schedule my 30 posts across 5 platforms every month, I used to focus on the “value” posts—the tutorials, the tips, the actionable advice. But the posts that consistently outperform them in reach are the hot takes. The posts where I say “This tool is overrated” or “This strategy is dead” get triple the comments and shares. The GOAT site is the pure, unadulterated version of that hot take. It’s not just saying “Ronaldo is overrated”; it’s letting you pay to say it. It’s a gamified version of the comment section, and it works because it taps into our tribal nature.
Why TikTok Creators Should Care More Than LinkedIn Ones
The audience on LinkedIn is there to network and learn; they want consensus and professionalism. A “pay to rank” mechanic would be seen as crass and manipulative. But on TikTok and Instagram, the audience is there for entertainment. They are primed for absurdity. The “GOAT” debate is a staple of sports TikTok and anime Twitter. A tool like this feeds directly into that ecosystem. If you’re a creator on those platforms, you can use this as a content prompt. Make a video about “Which character has the most delusional fans?” and use the bids as your evidence. It’s a ready-made source of controversy.
What I’d Watch / Test Next
I’m not going to rush out and build a bidding system for my newsletter. But I am going to take the core mechanics and test them in a low-stakes environment this week.
The “Fake Bid” Poll: I’m going to run a poll on my Instagram Stories where the “price” to vote is a “shoutout.” I’ll ask my audience to choose between two content directions, but I’ll frame it as “The winning side gets a dedicated story shoutout and a special code.” It’s not real money, but it’s a *cost*—it’s public commitment. I want to see if the threat of “losing” a shoutout increases the number of votes compared to a standard poll.
The “Trash” Comment Prompt: I’m going to intentionally post a controversial take on my X (Twitter) account and ask my followers to reply with their “OVERATED” picks—specifically telling them they can’t just agree with me. I want to see if the negative prompt generates more quote-tweets than a standard “What do you think?” prompt.
The Leaderboard Series: I’m going to start a “Leaderboard” thread on Threads where I rank my top 5 tools of the month and invite users to “bid” for their favorite by explaining why it should be #1. The most compelling argument gets the top spot next month. It’s a way to create a recurring content loop without building a web app.
The whoisthegoat.lol project is a reminder that the internet is still a playground. While we’re busy optimizing our Canva templates and CapCut edits, sometimes the best strategy is to just let the audience fight. The math on the bids might be broken, but the math on attention is not. Give them a reason to argue, and they’ll give you their time. That’s a trade I’m willing to make.
