Meok researchPrediction model

Meet MOK

Our prediction model for human behaviour, designed in house at Meok. Named for ink, and built on the balance of yin and yang.

Predicts human behaviour
Draws on four signals
Grounded in the literature

IThe name

Named for ink, and for balance

Meok (먹, 墨) is the ink stick you grind with water on an inkstone. Black ink on white paper is the oldest yin and yang there is.

In East Asian thought the world moves between two opposite forces. Yin (陰) is quiet and inward, what has been stored up. Yang (陽) is bright and outward, what is happening now. Neither one wins. The good moment is where they balance.

Prediction is the same craft, so we called the model MOK. Read what has happened, calmly. Watch what is moving now. Then pick the one post where the two meet.

萬物負陰而抱陽，沖氣以為和

All things carry yin and embrace yang; their breath blends into harmony.
Laozi, Dao De Jing, chapter 42

A scholar grinds ink on an inkstone in a pavilion under an old pine. Two threads of ink rise from it: a dark indigo one toward the moon, an apricot one toward the sun, twisting around each other. — Two threads of ink rise from the inkstone, one toward the moon and one toward the sun, and meet in the middle.

Yin

What has happened

Who the shop is and what it has said so far. MOK reads the record first, without hurry.

Yang

What is happening

Where attention is flowing right now, what is rising and what is fading. MOK watches the present.

Harmony

What comes next

The prediction itself. The one idea where both forces line up, chosen before you have to ask.

IIThe signals

Four signals behind every suggestion

Most models are built to generate. MOK is built to predict what to make. So every suggestion rests on four signals grounded in observed human behaviour. Two are yin, two are yang.

01Yin

Brand archetype

Who the shop is. The archetype sets the voice, the humour and the angle a story can take.

Fournier 1998 · Ireland & Pennebaker 2010
Read the research
02Coming soonYin

Past response

What actually happened. Which posts got saved and answered is the floor every prediction stands on. Responses from connected accounts join in when analytics opens.

de Vries et al. 2012 · Lee et al. 2018
Read the research
03Yang

What is rising now

What the world is looking at right now. We search the trade, competing shops, reviews and the neighbourhood as they are today. Timing is part of the idea.

Golder & Macy 2011 · Lazer et al. 2014
Read the research
04Yang

Your taste

What you swiped right and what you cleared. As approvals and rejections pile up, the standard for a good post grows to fit this shop.

Bradley & Terry 1952 · Dietvorst et al. 2018
Read the research

Figure 1. Illustrative values. The real mix shifts with the shop, its history and the moment.

IIIMethod

From context to idea

MOK sits between the world and the models that write and paint. It does not make the post. It decides what the post should be.

Context in

Your link
Brand archetype
Past response
What is rising
Your taste

MOK

Reading who you are…

One idea

A model that writes and paints

Text model
Image model
Video modelsoon

The idea arrives as precise instructions for whichever model renders it best.

The post

Text
Image
Videosoon

Figure 2. Context becomes one idea. The idea becomes a post.

Context in

Your shop’s link, its archetype, past response, what is rising, and your taste. MOK starts from who you are and where you stand today.
MOK balances

It weighs the four signals against each other and predicts the idea that fits this shop’s day best.
One idea out

The idea is handed to the models that write and paint as instructions they understand. The tool can change. The idea stays.

Black ink, blue ink and white water swirl into a yin-yang shape in a round inkstone — Figure 3. MOK grinds the signals into one idea and hands the writing and painting to another model.

Figure 3. MOK grinds the signals into one idea and hands the writing and painting to another model.

IVThe system

MOK predicts. Meok does the rest.

A prediction is only useful if you can act on it without thinking. Meok turns the idea MOK picked into a finished post and hands it to you as one card.

You don’t touch settings. You see a finished suggestion and swipe right if you like it, left if you don’t. Writing, painting and choosing the right time are ours. What you swipe, MOK reads again when it picks the next one.

Figure 4. The same idea, delivered as a finished suggestion. The screen is an example.

A worked example · not a real prediction

A small tea house in Gangneung

Say the owner gives us one link. The shop’s archetype is the Sage: calm, knowing.

MOK does not pick the usual tea-house post. It looks for where the shop’s grain (yin) meets what is moving now (yang), and today it picked “the hand that warms the cup first.”

What comes back is not a post yet. It is a prediction of the best move this shop can make today. Meok writes from there.

MOK’s call · illustrative

Tea house
Gangneung
Sage
October

“The hand that warms the cup first.” On cool mornings, a four-slide carousel that shows the hand warming the first cup, because a cold cup lets the aroma escape. Post Thursday at 8:00.

Yin · grainIt suits the calm, knowing voice of the Sage.
Yang · risingMornings are turning cool, and people look for something warm.
Yang · tasteYou approved a post about tea last time.

An idea, not a post yet. Meok writes it from here.

Figure 5. One context, several defensible moves. MOK weighs them and picks the strongest.

VThe shelf

The books beside the inkstone

MOK does not pick by feel. What draws people in, when they are open to it, and where prediction has to stop: from nearly seventy years of research, we keep ten papers beside the inkstone, the ones that hold up MOK’s yin and its yang.

Three numbers

One for yin, one for yang, and one for the humility between them.

Yin · what is stored

106,316

Facebook posts studied. Posts with personality, such as humour and emotion, drew more likes, comments and shares than bare prices and deals, and information landed best alongside personality.

Lee, Hosanagar & Nair · 2018 · Management Science
Yang · what is moving

100/108

weeks in which a flu forecast built on search trends alone ran too high. Even three-week-old records read the present better. The moment alone overshoots.

Lazer, Kennedy, King & Vespignani · 2014 · Science
Harmony · in between

14,341

people in an experimental music market. The best songs rarely did poorly and the worst rarely did well, but anything in between was possible. Prediction narrows the path; the last choice stays with a person.

Salganik, Dodds & Watts · 2006 · Science

All three numbers come from other people’s research. MOK’s own report card will be kept here, separately, as it builds up.

Ten papers, by year

Yingrain · past response
Yangthe moment · your taste
Harmonyseeing both at once

1952Yang · taste

A statistical model that ranks a whole field from nothing but choices between two. The root of learning taste from swipes.

Bradley & Terry (1952). Rank Analysis of Incomplete Block Designs: I. The Method of Paired Comparisons. Biometrika, 39(3/4).
1998Yin · grain

People form relationships with brands much as they do with people. That’s why a shop needs a steady character.

Fournier (1998). Consumers and Their Brands: Developing Relationship Theory in Consumer Research. Journal of Consumer Research, 24(4).
1999Harmony · both at once

Faced with two contradicting claims, Chinese participants accepted both in part and looked for a middle way, where Americans took sides. Yin-and-yang thinking, seen in the lab.

Peng & Nisbett (1999). Culture, Dialectics, and Reasoning About Contradiction. American Psychologist, 54(9).
2006Harmony · the limit

Showing people what others chose made success more unequal and harder to predict. Even good prediction is no guarantee.

Salganik, Dodds & Watts (2006). Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market. Science, 311(5762).
2010Yin · grain

Style matches without our noticing and is hard to fake on purpose. In the letters of Freud and Jung it rose and fell with their relationship. That’s why MOK learns a voice from what the shop actually wrote.

Ireland & Pennebaker (2010). Language Style Matching in Writing: Synchrony in Essays, Correspondence, and Poetry. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99(3).
2011Yang · the moment

Across cultures, moods on Twitter start the day high and sink as it goes on, and at weekends the morning peak comes two hours later. When you post is part of what you say.

Golder & Macy (2011). Diurnal and Seasonal Mood Vary with Work, Sleep, and Daylength Across Diverse Cultures. Science, 333(6051).
2012Yin · response

Across 355 posts from 11 brands, what drew likes was not what drew comments. That’s why past response is never read as a single number.

de Vries, Gensler & Leeflang (2012). Popularity of Brand Posts on Brand Fan Pages: An Investigation of the Effects of Social Media Marketing. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 26(2).
2014Yang · the moment

A flu forecast that trusted search trends alone ran high in most weeks for two years, and three-week-old records read the present better. Yang without yin overflows.

Lazer, Kennedy, King & Vespignani (2014). The Parable of Google Flu: Traps in Big Data Analysis. Science, 343(6176).
2018Yin · response

Personality drew engagement, prices and deals worked best alongside it, and deals drove the click-throughs. What a post is for decides which response to measure.

Lee, Hosanagar & Nair (2018). Advertising Content and Consumer Engagement on Social Media: Evidence from Facebook. Management Science, 64(11).
2018Yang · taste

People are far more willing to use an algorithm when they can adjust it, even slightly, and they do better for it. That’s why Meok lets you swipe, edit and reject.

Dietvorst, Simmons & Massey (2018). Overcoming Algorithm Aversion: People Will Use Imperfect Algorithms If They Can (Even Slightly) Modify Them. Management Science, 64(3).

VIWhy we build it

Not pushing. Balancing.

Good marketing is not pushing hard. It is fitting. The voice should match the shop’s grain, and the moment to post should match what the world is doing. Good owners already know this, but it is hard to judge by hand every day.

MOK reads that judgement for you and Meok turns it into a month of posts. You look after the shop and swipe right on the ones you like.

Read the research See how Meok works

MOK is designed at Meok and is still learning. This page describes it as it stands on September 30, 2026, and we will rewrite it here when that changes.