The #viralvideos conversation on TikTok is constant, it never really goes away because the dream of going viral never goes away, and I've been tagging content to that search because I have something useful to say that I don't often hear said: I had a viral video, it was one time, it was not what I expected, and I will now tell you everything I actually learned from it including the parts that sound like cautionary tales because they are cautionary tales.
First: the setup. A while back, before HEATHEN HYMNS came out and deep in the recording period, I posted a video that I made in about twelve minutes. I was exhausted, it was very late, I had cold coffee and I was sitting in my secondhand chair doing a bit about something that had irritated me during the day. It was not my most polished work. The lighting was bad. My hair was a mess. I was wearing a shirt I'm pretty sure I'd had on for two days. And that video got more views in forty-eight hours than everything else I'd ever posted combined, by a significant margin.
I have made videos in this apartment that I spent real hours on. Careful lighting, scripted talking points, re-recorded until the energy was right, edited with intention, posted at the "right" time. Many of those videos have lived their quiet, unremarkable lives in the three-hundred-to-two-thousand views bracket. The twelve-minute chaotic mess is the one that landed on half a million For You Pages. Cool. Great. Very explainable.
What Actually Made It Work (And What Was Just Luck)
I have thought about this a lot. Like, embarrassingly a lot. And I've talked to other creators who've had their one big moment, and we've all gone through the same forensic analysis. Here's what I've concluded, with the caveat that I am working from a sample size of one and the internet is not a controlled experiment.
The timing was right. Not right as in I strategically calculated the posting time, right as in I accidentally posted at a moment when a LOT of people were scrolling because of some external event that had people on their phones. I didn't plan this. I couldn't have planned this. It was luck, full stop. The initial velocity, those crucial first couple of hours where the algorithm decides if it's going to push your content wider, got a boost because the audience pool was larger than average. That is not craft. That is being in the right place at the right time, which is one of the most important factors in any kind of success and also one of the factors you have zero control over.
The video was emotionally immediate. This one I can actually take credit for, and it connects to something real. When I'm exhausted and not performing, when I'm just reacting to something, there's a rawness in how I talk and move that doesn't come through the same way when I'm polished. The comments on that video repeatedly said things like "this feels so real" and "I can tell she's genuinely annoyed" and "why is this so relatable." The emotional authenticity was there because I wasn't trying to create emotional authenticity. I was just having a reaction to something in real time. That's a craft lesson, kind of: sometimes the least produced version of you is the most compelling. But also sometimes you're tired and you make a quick video and it just connects and there's no lesson to extract, it just happened.
The topic had a broad emotional hook. The specific thing I was ranting about (I'm being intentionally vague here because the content of the video matters less than the mechanics) was something that many different kinds of people could relate to from their own different contexts. It wasn't niche. It was about a universal human experience that cuts across demographics. That broad relatability is something you can engineer, to a degree. You can ask "how many different people does this resonate with?" before you post. But you can't guarantee that your estimate of the breadth is right. I got lucky that this particular topic had wider resonance than I'd calculated.
What the Comments Told Me
Going from my usual comment section to the comment section of a video that a lot of people saw is a genuinely different experience and I want to describe it accurately. The majority, the vast majority, was good. Funny, warm, people finding themselves in what I'd said, people tagging friends, people sharing experiences related to the topic. That was beautiful. That's the reason you make content. That human connection moment, multiplied by several hundred thousand, is extraordinary.
But there's a minority of the comment section on viral content that is just MEAN in a way that's specifically calibrated to be mean. Not criticism (I can work with criticism) but the kind of mean that's designed to minimize and dismiss. A lot of it was about how I look, which says nothing about anything except the commenter's particular damage. Some of it was "who is this person why is this on my FYP," which is valid but also kind of hilarious because babe, I don't control whose FYP I'm on. Some of it was engagement-bait disguised as criticism. I learned to identify these quickly and not take them as seriously as my nervous system wanted to.
The most important thing the comments told me: the people who actually engaged positively were not, for the most part, people who then became long-term followers. The viral bump brought in a lot of one-time viewers. The number of people who hit follow and then stuck around, who became actual community members, people who are still here now commenting on HEATHEN HYMNS posts and turning up for everything I make, that number was much smaller than the raw view count implied. Virality is reach without relationship. Reach matters, but relationship is what you're actually building when you make content consistently over time.
Why Chasing Virality Will Rot Your Catalog
Here's the thing I've watched happen to other creators and that I was determined not to let happen to me: you have one viral moment, and then you spend the next year trying to reverse-engineer it. You post versions of the same thing. You adopt the same format. You lean into whatever element you've convinced yourself was the magic ingredient, the topic, the tone, the specific way you held your hands, and you try to replicate it. And two things happen. One: it almost never replicates. The factors that made the original viral were not fully in your control and cannot be reproduced on demand. Two: the attempt to replicate pulls you away from making the genuine, specific, weird, real stuff that would actually build your audience over time.
For me as a musician, the stakes are higher than just views. My catalog is the actual thing, the songs, the record, the body of work that will exist after every specific TikTok trend has cycled through and been replaced. If I optimized my whole creative life around chasing what worked for one viral video on a platform that will look completely different in three years, I would sacrifice the music for the metrics. And the music is the point. Always was, always will be. The platform is the distribution mechanism. The work is the work.
HEATHEN HYMNS exists because I made it in a closet for the right reasons, not the algorithmic ones. No song on that record was written because I thought it would trend. Every song was written because I had to write it, because it was true, because it was the thing I needed to say. And those songs are finding their people, not through one explosive viral moment but through the slow, steady accumulation of people who hear them and share them and come back for more. that's a better way to build. Slower, less dramatic, more real.
What I Actually Recommend
If you make content and you want to grow: stop trying to go viral and start trying to be genuinely yourself consistently. I know that sounds like a motivational poster and I apologize. But here's what I mean practically. Viral content is a lottery ticket. Consistent, genuine, specific content is a savings account. Lottery tickets have bigger individual payouts but the expected value is negative. Savings accounts compound. The math is not complicated.
Post about things you actually care about. Post in a way that is actually you. Post consistently enough that the algorithm has a clear picture of what you are. Do the twelve-minute exhausted video sometimes, because the rawness lands differently. Do the careful, considered video sometimes, because the craft lands differently. Don't pick one mode and get rigid about it. Stay curious about what you're making. Let yourself be interested in the making rather than fixated on the result.
And if you go viral: enjoy the moment. Let it be what it is. Then go back to building the actual thing. The viral moment is not the destination. It's a weird random pit stop on a much longer road. The road is the point.
Thank you for coming to my talk. I love you. Go make something real.