Thanks for bringing up Cat Person. I was thinking of this story just the other day. It has been killing me that I couldn't remember the name or author.

I wasn't aware that it went viral. I read it a long time ago and just filed it away in my head as a fantastic short story. When I read your description of it, I thought to myself, "wait, is that it? That story?"

The reason I think it was successful was that the writer took a sledgehammer to the ending. We don't see a lot of that these days. We already have the sense that the guy, Robert, is a little creepy. Then she hammers us with something that affirms our suspicion. Really brilliant.

I'm not sure that short stories are a thing of the past. Here on Medium there is a pretty dedicated subset of lovers of the craft.

If you look at Submittable, you'll see dozens of short story contests and hundreds of magazines seeking out short stories. There's a market out there.

I think part of the problem is that there's a glut of bad short stories. I'm sure I've written a few myself. It's easy to crank out a bad story. I know this from experience.

But people tire of endless explorations of what a character is contemplating while sipping a cappuccino on a Costa Rican beach in the wake of a dysfunctional encounter.

A story with a crescendo like Roupenian's, followed by a solid punch , will always have a chance to go viral (but probably won't for the same reason short stories before hers didn't).

I could almost argue that short stories are the perfect medium in this day of TikTok, but that it's just harder to surface good ones. They're out there, but there isn't really a good way for them to get loud.

I think you nailed it, too, when you talk about stories on Medium. Memoirs and "It happened to me" stories are very popular here.

This, I believe, opens up the possibility that a truly impactful piece of small fiction can be a home run. In general, slice of life stuff won't be. People are more interested in real slice of life (memoirs) than fictional ones.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't write more subtle pieces. We're not really in it for the money, right? Just write what you want to, and if you get lucky and win the lotto with it, yay.

Chances are, you won't. We don't usually catch fire with our novels, either. The huge majority of published novels don't sell more than 1000 copies, even when printed by major publishers.

Short stories, novels, whatever, most of us won't become famous by writing. Or rich!