Countless books, conferences — entire careers, even! — are devoted to the idea that social media can somehow be optimized and perfected. Marketers and social media editors pursue the perfect tweet like the holy grail. Is it vague or newsy? Long or short? Does it — ugh — contain hashtags? At last, researchers at Cornell University have found the secret to eternal RTs, and the answer is, per their recent paper: “… adding more information, making one’s language align with both community norms and with one’s prior messages, and mimicking news headlines.” Including positive or negative words and requesting followers to retweet also pays off. (That’s it? Really?!) Perhaps the most salient takeaway here is that, despite all the algorithms and optimizations, social media remains a fickle and serendipitous beast.