How are people consistently coming up with viral content ideas?

Curious how others here are approaching short-form content right now.

It feels like building has become 10x easier, but distribution is still the bottleneck. Especially with TikTok, Reels, and Shorts, it’s not obvious what to post or what will actually perform.

A few things I’ve been thinking about:

• Are you starting from scratch every time, or studying what’s already working?

• Do you have a repeatable system for generating ideas?

• How much time are you spending on content vs actually building?

We’ve been experimenting a lot with this, specifically around remixing high-performing content formats (slideshows, hooks, UGC-style videos, etc.) instead of guessing from zero, and it’s been interesting to see how much more predictable results become.

Would love to hear how others here are thinking about it. What’s actually working for you right now?