What It’s Like Going Viral On TikTok and How To Do It

Why would many people appreciate her video mean that she would have to make the same joke if she no longer wanted to tell it? She went on to tell me, in regards to her video’s success: “it's fun when the validation starts to roll in, and you don’t want the high to stop.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. My friend has just gone viral on TikTok for the first time. As someone who has gone viral quite a few times, I can attest that calling it a “high” is not at all an understatement though it is fun, it can leave a void in its wake if you don’t approach it with the right mindset.

My first viral videos were me challenging kids on TikTok to guess Justin Bieber’s social media passwords and to message me “I got in” once someone did. I followed up with a video where I made it look like someone successfully got into Justin’s Instagram and DMed the code words to me (I just messaged Justin “I got in” on Instagram and marked it as unread, so it looked like he sent ME the message). 

That video got 7 million views. It was quite cool knowing that Justin probably saw the video. If he did, he might have absolutely hated it. But it made me laugh, and that’s really all that mattered. Plus, I know he must have double authentication - so who gives a damn! The thought of millions of kids trying to guess Justin’s password is hysterical to me.

And therein lies the key factor for me having gone viral many times: Making myself laugh.  

I did another series where I had a bunch of kids tag celebrities like Billie Eilish, David Dobrik, and Ellen in photos of me in a Teletubby costume on Halloween until they answered me. We successfully got David Dobrik and Ellen to acknowledge us. At one point, cults of children (and adults, I’d later find out) started tagging other celebrities. At a time, Former President Barack Obama, and every other celebrity I could think of had photos of me in their tagged photos. As fun as it was, it was also kind of scary — some kids started “revolting”, accusing me of using them for clout. Others were just demanding more “targets'' to “attack”. It made me laugh, watching children form governments inside Instagram group chats akin to Lord of The Flies. Even the photos of me being beheaded made me laugh.

But after a while, the virality made me anxious. Were these celebrities pissed? Was I going to be known as the Teletubby guy for the rest of the time? I once thought of myself as an artist, but am I now just destined to be a meme? Just like my friend in the clown costume, I was worried that the artistic integrity I thought I once had would be undermined by a juvenile joke in a costume.

Seeing people I know is cooler because they most certainly know about it already. But even that has gotten somewhat old. You get sick of telling the same story. They wanna know about the Teletubby thing! Forgive me if I seem ungrateful, but sometimes you just don’t feel like telling a story 1000 times. Now imagine being Paul Mccartney, where everyone knows and loves the Beatles. I bet it gets annoying talking about how the song "Yesterday" came to him in a dream or that the original words in place of “Yesterday” were "scrambled eggs” for the millionth time. Or maybe it doesn’t, I don’t know. I won’t pretend my Tiktok clout compares to being among the best songwriters to have ever lived. But it does make me wonder.

Don’t get me wrong. I love that people enjoyed the videos I have made so far. And I will always tell you about it if you wanna know. But you can only ride the high of that successful thing you did for so long before you think, “Well, what’s next?”. When you make the video, and tons of people like it and commenting on it, you feel like a legend. But a week, a month, a year later, you no longer feel like you did on the day it got a million views.

I hit 700 thousand followers on Tiktok. Then, over a few months, it dropped down to 660k. My first thought was, “wow, I could fill Madison Square Garden twice with the number of people that thought, “fuck this guy’.” A friend of mine pointed out that I could fill it 33 times with the people that stayed, which is a nice sentiment, but “a broken heart has never been mended through the ears.” I realize everyone is different; the nature of my relationship to going viral will be different from other peoples’. Some people post 20 times a day, anything that pops into their head, and they have no problem receiving hate, losing followers, etc. And some people cannot post at all. Everyone’s different! I can only tell you my own perspective. Additionally, getting a lot of followers made it harder to post because there was suddenly a guarantee that a ton of people would see my video, whereas before, it was contingent on the video doing well with the algorithm. 

Going viral is undeniably an amazing feeling. Tons of people enjoying what you’ve made, adding their own twists and observations in the comments, further amplifying the value of the video (and bringing you, the creator, a satisfaction with having collaborated with strangers). It's not going viral that makes you feel down, but the failed pursuit of getting it again can make you feel like shit. If you’re expecting a video to get a ton of views, or for people to just think it's funny/engaging, and it ends up tanking, It’s like that first sip of your hot coffee when you find out it's cold. It's waking up from the dream where you were married to that person. You can’t go into it with expectations. You have to make it for yourself and be okay with it not connecting like you thought it might have.