My First Viral Video

I'm not doing a Christmas post this year. I thought I'd share something that happened recently.

I've been posting videos on YouTube for more than 13 years. I post videos on a number of different topics, some of which related to this blog and my experiences with neurodiversity (although I haven't posted on that subject in years). Sometimes, they can consist of little jokes and observances. I was basically making YouTube Shorts in landscape mode.

I wasn't expecting much at first, but I was hoping that my audience would grow as I developed more content and I would get a clearer idea of the direction my channel was going to take. If I started getting a lot of followers, I could consider monetizing my channel. However, very few of my videos ever got more than a few dozen views. It looked like this was just going to remain a hobby.

One day, I shared a video that became my first actual YouTube Short. I was astonished at how quickly it racked up 14,000 views. In addition, it was getting more likes and comments than all my previous videos combined.

I started producing more Shorts. But I didn't get anywhere near as many views as I had on that first one. But they were averaging about a thousand views each, so I still saw this as an improvement over my previous posts. Eventually, I produced a Short that garnered 25,000 views on YouTube.

A few weeks ago, I was driving home from work on Southbound Highway 85 before the Union Avenue exit. There is a bridge overhead that frequently sees demonstrations over various policital issues. They were there before the recent 2025 California General Election. But this time, their signs said, "Honk if you're not in the Epstein Files." I quickly thought of a joke and recorded it. I then posted it on YouTube. After I got home, I posted it on my Facebook page, and it was simultaneousy posted on Instagram.

I managed to rack up 7,000 views within 24 hours on YouTube. That was way better than average. But I didn't really pay attention to it for a couple of days. I later went on Instagram and was shocked beyond belief that it had acquired more than 400,000 views! Not to mention that it had thousands of likes and more than 100 comments. In addition, I'd gotten about 30 additional followers because of this video. And the number continued to increase above 765,000 views. It's pretty much slowed down, but I continue to slowly get more views and likes.

All of a sudden, the pressure was on to create more content. I couldn't think of anything new that I could immediately post, so I would find some of my old short videos and redo them for the YouTube Shorts format. I also made sure these would post on Instagram. Sadly, nothing else is hitting like the Epstein video. I am getting more views than average, but I don't think I'll get another viral hit like this right away.

And that really burns me up. I've often heard stories about artists (music and otherwise) who would work really hard on their craft, but find that their most popular and enduring work is the stuff they basically slapped together in a short amount of time without a lot of thought. For me, this was just a joke on the fly. But I guess that the combination of politics, sex and crime created a perfect storm that was hard for everyone to ignore. It is rather irritating that the social media projects I put a lot of thought and planning behind don't get much traction. This would apply to the "A Liberal Christian" project (which was all done before YouTube Shorts became a thing) and my efforts to get Democrats to temporarily change their registration so they could vote against Trump in the primary (which were ALL YouTube Shorts). If 700,000 people saw those videos, I could have really made a difference.

So, I don't know when I'll get lucky like this again.