Going Viral is Weird
Views and likes and trolls, oh my!
Wow. Okay. So.
Last week, I wrote about my entrée into the We Do Not Care Club, a nascent social media movement for women in perimenopause and menopause that was started by a woman named Melani who posted an impromptu video on TikTok from the driver’s seat of her car.
I jibed with this club immediately, and quickly recorded a video application and a follow-up video listing a few things about which, you guessed it, I do not care. Somehow, my second video hit the algorithmic jet stream. 1,000 views. 3,000. 5,000. I couldn’t believe it!
The next day, my views surpassed 20K. Then 50K. Was I going to go viral? Also: what, technically, is viral?
I asked the Google. However I phrased the question, Google told me that 100K views is viral. (Though, interestingly, I just Googled again and the answer is 2-3 million, so maybe I’m not viral after all? Except that perimenopause is a relatively small content niche, so maybe I am? I think I am. Either way I am running out of brain bandwidth to debate it, so I’m just going to claim my virality.)
One hundred thousand views? Of me? No way.
Yes way. I hit 100K. Then 120K. Then 160K. And the view count is still growing.
Going viral is weird. Putting my writing out into the world always makes me feel vulnerable, whether it’s a pithy little social media post or this Substack or, you know, a memoir. Videos make me feel even more vulnerable than my words. But I’ve often comforted myself with the idea that I have so few followers, it’s not like very many people will see me anyway.
Oops.
Now there have been one hundred and sixty-thousand pairs of eyeballs looking in my closet. Seeing my gray hair and fine lines. Watching me. Judging me (whether consciously or subconsciously). EEEEEEEEKKK.
And the trolls. Wow. The badass, empowered side of me knows that garnering trolls means that you are doing something right. Your posts are getting traction. Your platform is growing—which is the point of all this social media effort in the first place, to grow my platform and convert scrollers to followers to readers. Trolls mean you are succeeding!
But then there’s my little inner people-pleasing perfectionist. As much as I have worked to show her love and provide her strength and safety so she doesn’t feel the need to freak out, there’s nothing like being called a “rip-off” or “cheap imitation” (or worse things, which I won’t repeat here) to send her into a tizzy.
As the trolls reared up, my inner people-pleaser stoked each spark of anxiety into a roaring flame. I hadn’t felt anxiety at this troll-induced level for years. And I did not care for it.
All I wanted to do with this video was join a movement! To add my voice to the cause! To do something creative that would hopefully inspire other women to follow suit! Because I truly, genuinely believe that the more we share our stories and our do-not-cares, the stronger we all become!
The trolls obviously don’t care about that. They choose to see what they want to see, and what they want to see is something that will fuel their ire. As I tell my kids, when someone says something rude to you, it’s because they don’t feel good about themselves. I know this is true. But it still hurt, a lot, to be trolled.
I have felt a lot of feelings over the last week. But I’ve stayed on the emotional rollercoaster instead of jettisoning out. Because I’ve had enough practice by now to know that there is so much value in moving through discomfort instead of escaping from or denying it. We gain so much strength by staying, by forging through instead of dodging around.
I still feel a twinge of anxiety every time I log onto Instagram and check the latest comments on my posts. I dread the next trolling. But I enjoy the positive comments, too. Women are awesome and hilarious, and bonding over our do-not-cares has been so much fun.
It’s been an amazing feeling to watch both my view and follower counts go up every day for the last week. I am putting effort into social media right now to build a platform which will ultimately help me build my readership. And I am doing it! Even though it’s uncomfortable! I’m doing it.
Going viral is weird. But it’s also pretty darn cool.
Ugh! I'm sorry you're dealing with trolls. My advice is to just stop reading the comments. Scroll right on past! You have worked hard!