First, I want to state for the record that I’m not a fan of the concept of “going viral”. I think it’s a pretty toxic concept - a reasonable thought about something with the word “viral” amidst a global pandemic, no?
Now, with that on record, I’m going to share that last week, I went viral. Or, more specifically, a single Tiktok that I made went viral. Within 24 hours, my Tiktok had over 1.6M views, 160K likes, 1300 comments, and I had gained over 500 followers. Before that Tiktok, I had 17 followers, and the most views a single post had ever gotten was 1200. The most likes a single post had ever gotten was 15. I was not, by any stretch, relevant on Tiktok.
Fortunately, for those worried that I’ll be swallowed by Tiktok fame, fear not. That flame burned bright and quickly burnt out. I’ve since posted 4 videos - sort of as an experiment, certainly not for more clout, who do you think I am? - and they have, after 48 hours, received a combined total of 106 views, 6 likes, and no comments. Also, 3 of those likes were from me (gotta get that train started, you know?). So I’m back to a Tiktok nobody, feet firmly placed on the ground, and I will not be moving into a Tiktok house (yes, those are a thing. A bunch of kids [I honestly don’t know how old they are] will live in a house in Hollywood together and exist to create content).
Before I get into what that day felt like, let me write a description of this Tiktok to set the scene.
It’s Wednesday, January 20. Inauguration Day.
The video is a haphazard handheld recording of my television, just me pointing my phone at my tv from the couch. I am not visible at any point. On the television, Lady Gaga is approaching the podium to sing the national anthem. As the camera zooms in on Lady Gaga’s outfit, a black mockneck fitted top, giant poppy red ballgown skirt, and a giant gold bird pin above her right breast, I shout out, “she’s wearing a mockingjay pin! Lady Gaga is wearing a Mockingjay pin at the Capitol of the United States? Oh, no it’s a dove. It’s a dove. It’s just a dove.” Each sentence that I say out loud pops up in highlighted texted on the screen to serve as closed captions.
That’s it. That’s the Tiktok. It’s twelve seconds long, and it took a surprising amount of time to make - at least 10 minutes - because manual timed closed captions take a while to edit. Or maybe I’m revealing my age (Tiktok isn’t for me, a millennial, you see. Maybe this whole essay is revealing my age. Oh well, as my Tiktok bio says: “age is meaningless”).
I am quite certain that a key reason why this Tiktok was so successful is because of my caption:
MILLENNIAL CHECK! Anyone [sic] other #HungerGames fans mistake that for a #mockingjay?? #inaugaration #fyp #ladygaga #katniss #itsadove
If you’re wondering what “millennial check” means, I envy you, because that means you are blissfully unaware of the endlessly rotating door of Tiktok trends and memes. “Millennial check”, my dear reader, is a thing someone says before they show one or many visual cues of their age, like, for example, immediately connecting a national event to a YA dystopian series you read when you were in high school.
You’ll notice I used hashtags in my caption. Hashtags are obnoxious, and they are also very helpful sometimes. Tiktok’s secret sauce is its hyper-specific algorithm and never-ending “For You” page, where a mixture of accounts you follow and those that Tiktok thinks you will like will populate, and hashtags are one important component of that algorithm. Other components include the video itself, the filter used, the voice effect used, and the sound used. Each of those components trends in waves, and most users with large followings generally ride those waves to stay on folks’ For You page.
I followed a common tactic of incorporating hashtags into the sentence to make it feel more organic (nailed it). I also added some catchalls to both broaden and focus my reach. “#fyp” is short for “for you page”. I honestly don’t know if that hashtag does anything because it has 7.7 TRILLION VIEWS BEHIND IT. That’s 7,735.1 billion, to be more precise. “#inaugaration” was an important hashtag because it was one that was already trending on TikTok, so no matter what I posted it was likely to be boosted by the algorithm because of that hashtag. “#ladygaga” was relevant to the post, of course, and could tap into a niche crowd that follows videos that mention her; I had the same strategy with “#katniss”.
And then I got really cheeky and decided to add “#itsadove” in case this went viral and then it could be one of those, like, meta-memes, you know? One of those memes where a thing is created, then it’s expanded upon or shifted to metaphor and takes on a life of its own? Lubalin’s first “Internet Drama” song is an excellent example of what I mean. It started as a silly song based on random, low-stakes internet drama. It blew up, then it was used as a sound for people to share when they asked for something, thought they would receive it, but were then vehemently denied. It’s brilliant, and I love it. It’s why I stick around on this platform that terrifies me after what I experienced with a single viral Tiktok.
@lubalin “Internet Drama Part 1”
@jackieharderart variation
@misscorinne86 variation
My video hit 1.6M views in 24 hours. It hit 1 million views in 12 hours. It is a very surreal feeling to watch what you assumed would be another obscure post that’s really only for you and the people you choose to make watch it in front of you blow up. Within the first 20 minutes after posting, I went back on to Tiktok to scroll for a bit and found that I had so many notifications it didn’t even show me a number? I have one Tiktok friend with whom I exchange DMs so we can share the dumb Tiktoks we’ve giggled at, and that is the only notification I see, ever. This was new, and when I clicked it, I saw that my Tiktok had 20K views, which blew me away. A few minutes later, it doubled. It was then, at 40K views and 10:24 am PST, that I shared the news with my family via our group text:
“So I’m tiktok famous now. Please don’t treat me different, I’m still just a person.”
I continued to check in to measure the growth, because I was fascinated.
11:00 am: I started engaging in the comments (now I wanted to see how high this thing could get, and comment engagement always helps - that’s social media 101!).
11:12 am: I broke 115K views and had tripled my follower count (reminder: I started with 17).
11:14 am (yes, two minutes later): I broke 130K views. That twelve-second video was watched 15,000 times in two minutes. I just did the math, prepared to be blown away, but that’s 125 people, which actually isn’t so hard to believe. But I’m leaving the note for the record. Also, it was at this point that my family asked when I would become a full-time Tiktoker.
11:40 am: despite telling my family I would send a final update by EOD, I sent one less than 30 minutes later to share that I had surpassed 300K views.
12:27 pm: 500K views. Now my brother earnestly asks if I will get some sort of compensation for views, and I have no idea but assume no. This is also when I have shifted from casual comment engagement to full-blown moderator, blocking Q folks left and right (more on that soon enough).
2:26 pm: 825K view. 85K likes. That update doesn’t even warrant a response, because the clout has gone to all of our heads and if it’s not a million, then it’s irrelevant.
4:52 pm: 1M views. Over 100K likes, almost 1000 comments and 300 followers. My dad tells me to “stay in control” and “don’t let it go to your head”. I tell him it’s too late, and I’ve already bought a mansion in The Hills.
I stopped documenting the growth after that, and you’ve seen the final statistics already. I had seen the sort of numbers that Tiktoks could receive, and I had seen posts from folks who had a Tiktok go viral overnight, so I knew it was possible, but I genuinely did not think it was possible for someone with next to no following at all - under 20 people - who had never broken 15 likes before. Experiencing that - even when I knew that this event was meaningless (I guess I’m writing this, so not totally meaningless?) - was surreal. It’s very easy to get swept up. I found I was most enthralled with the comments.
They always say “don’t read the comments”, but I think that should be rephrased to “don’t internalize the comments”. Reading comments from trolls without internalizing them can actually be pretty fun. My most-liked comment reply was, “ok!” to someone who posted, “wont [sic] watch or support her on anything again”. That was way more fun for me than to waste energy on a retort. Plus, a lot can be learned from reading the comments.
One thing I learned was that our collective attention spans are worse than I thought. As I’ve noted, my Tiktok was twelve seconds long. At seven seconds, I say out loud and the text on the screen reads, “no that’s a dove”, then “it’s a dove” again, this time with larger text, and then a third time, “it’s just a dove”. I can’t tell you how many comments were variations of, “LOL THAT’S NOT A MOCKINGJAY”, or “IT’S A DOVE YOU DUMMY”, or “STOP WITH THE CONSPIRACIES IT’S JUST A DOVE”.
Imagine that. You stumble upon a 12-second video. It catches your eye because of the extreme statement being made: that Lady Gaga is wearing a Mockingjay at the Capital. You are enraged at the very notion and immediately stop watching the video so that you can yell a correction at the creator. Once complete, you continue on your way. If only you had waited a few more seconds! You would have seen! We’re on the same side! I don’t think I could have been clearer in my correction! When the first of those comments came, I quickly replied, “wait it’s NOT a mockingjay???” and chuckled at myself. I then made a second Tiktok, eager to capitalize on my new Tiktok fame, to explain that, in fact, I know that it’s a dove. I even made a hashtag for it, “#itsadove”. I posted that second Tiktok, but when it didn’t surpass 2 views in 20 minutes, I bailed, like a coward, and deleted it.
I was also not prepared for the QAnon folks to wiggle into the comments, though I certainly should have been. I had seen videos of folks accidentally making it onto MAGA Tiktok and desperately asking folks who align with their values to engage with the post to get back to the other side of Tiktok, and I did not want that to happen to me. These individuals were never explicit in the fact that they follow what’s ostensibly a death cult with our disgraced former president somehow its lord and savior that organized and led a fatal attempted coup, they’d just casually mention how Biden is a pedophile and Lady Gaga drank Satan’s blood and everyone on that stage would get what they deserved. Rather than engage, I simply blocked, immediately and without remorse. There was the smallest part that worried I was creating an echo chamber for myself or censoring voices, but then I remembered that this was my Tiktok post and I can do whatever I want with it, and I absolutely do not want anyone to use it as a platform to convince others of that bullshit conspiracy theory.
There were also very fun comments. Some of my favorites include “overreact much?” (to which I replied: “yes literally all the time”), “when the girl in recess looks up from her book” (I very much agree, that’s the energy I was giving), and the other things people thought the pin was before realizing it was a dove: turkey, duck, and bread.
After a whirlwind day of surprise virtual attention from strangers, what surprised me most is how energizing it was to watch those attention metrics skyrocket, and how much I wanted it to happen again. I’m a competitive person, but I do not value social media attention - especially not to that degree. I know that chasing internet fame is a slippery slope, because it can be very easy to lean into the algorithm and post with specific results in mind, aiming to create something that others want instead of what matters to you. And it’s no secret that those notifications are direct dopamine hits to the brain - especially my ADHD brain. I couldn’t look away, and I was thinking of how to maximize and repeat this success, despite knowing that I didn’t want to do that. I think I was caught up in how easy this was - I wasn’t even trying to get these results, and look what happened! Surely I’d be able to do it again.
I think that is Tiktok’s secret sauce. The off-chance that creators will luck into a virality with the right post - it’s like playing the lottery! But make no mistake, there is no luck involved. Tiktok has full control on any Tiktok creator’s visibility. Even when following specific accounts, there is no guarantee that you’ll see their content on your For You page or even on your Following page. It’s pretty easy to remember that fact when views and engagement is low. Yet somehow, when views and engagement are high, that fact slips away, and I found myself patting myself on the back for creating such a kickass Tiktok. I believed that I did all the right things at the right time, and now that I’ve cracked the code, I’ll be able to do it again. And I tried to do it again. And nothing happened. So, because I am in my mid-thirties and have craft projects to tend to and a full-time job, I stopped trying or caring, chalked this up to dumb luck, and moved on.
But what if I wasn’t a millennial trying her best on a platform meant for teens? What if I was a teen, and suddenly a video I made in my bedroom went viral? I imagine that would have a pretty significant impact on my teenager brain, and I would want to do it again. I also imagine that I would be frustrated and confused when it didn’t happen again, and perhaps I would keep trying, creating more content and trying to find something that the algorithm likes enough to boost on the For You page. I might look at popular Tiktok accounts of people like me and see what they’re doing differently. Maybe I’ll dress differently. Maybe I’ll change my look. Maybe I’ll learn some dances.
We know that social media messes with people’s self-image, we know that the algorithms are built to keep our attention for as long as possible, we know that platforms reward users who spend more time on that platform. What strikes me is how the platforms don’t only mold us as viewers, but also as creators. Feed-based social media exists for advertisers, not creators, not users. That’s not new information, but it’s becoming increasingly clear when each app update makes it less user-friendly but somehow easier to shop without having to leave the app (ahem, Instagram). As a creator, you remain under the platform’s control, because it filters content based on the likelihood that someone will stay engaged or leave the platform. That means creators have to adapt to fit the mold that the algorithm sets for them in order to succeed. That also often means non-white voices, social justice issues, and non-eurocentric beauty standards get buried. And if you’re surprised that this came back around to capitalism and white supremacy, strap in. It’s basically the theme of this newsletter.
As a reward, here is my mediocre yet popular Tiktok. I must warn you that I’ve been told the most common video to auto-play following a Tiktok external link is a blackhead video, so if that’s not your thing, close that window as soon as the video ends!