When the Algorithm Finally Responds

For years, social media and I have been in a very committed, very unhealthy relationship. I showed up each day with my best effort, lighting, and angle, which still made me look like I was getting interrogated.

Social media, on the other hand, mostly responded by patting me on the head and saying, “That’s nice,” before wandering off to flirt with a dancing dog or a teenager pointing at floating words.

And then, out of nowhere, it happened. Two of my videos, critical of today’s media, went viral.

Not “my mom shared it with her bridge club” viral. I mean algorithm-viral. One is hovering around sixty-four thousand views, as the other sailed past seventy thousand like it had somewhere important to be.

For context, most of my previous videos lived long, quiet lives with view counts that could be mistaken for grocery prices.

I had always imagined this moment differently. I pictured confetti, maybe trumpets, possibly a montage where I run through a field in slow motion while inspirational music swells.

Surely, I thought, this would be the payoff. The thrill, the moment I’d been chasing while arguing with captions, hashtags, and whatever time of day the internet decided it liked best that week.

Instead, I felt nothing. Well, not nothing, more like a strange emotional shrug.

I refreshed the page. Still viral. I checked again. Yep. Numbers climbing. People commenting. Sharing. Strangers looking at something I said, and yet, here I am, sitting on the couch thinking, “Huh. Is this it?”

It turns out that when you chase something for a long time, you build up an expectation in your head. You imagine it arriving with fireworks and validation and a sudden sense that you’ve “made it.”

But virality, at least in my case, showed up more like a package you forgot you ordered. You open it, look inside, and say, “Oh.”

And that’s when the question started creeping in. What was all that effort for?

All that time thinking, “Maybe this one will be different. Was the goal really just a bigger number next to a play button?”

I realized something uncomfortable: I had been measuring success in applause instead of alignment. I wanted the crowd more than I wanted the content to mean something.

The algorithm finally hugged me back, and I discovered I didn’t actually feel hugged at all. Don’t get me wrong, going viral isn’t bad.

I’m grateful. It’s a gift, but it’s also oddly hollow if you expect it to fill places not designed for reach.

Views don’t kiss my wife goodnight. Likes don’t laugh at your jokes in real time, and shares don’t sit with you when the house is quiet, and you’re wondering if you’re doing anything right.

The joy of it wasn’t missing. I was just never meant to come from the numbers.

The real win was in creating, telling stories, and showing up, even when nobody was watching. Viral or not, that part never changed.

So here I am, two viral videos later, still wandering around my house in socks, still trying to balance ambition with perspective. The internet finally noticed me, and I learned that what I was really looking for had been in the room with me all the time.

Turns out, the thrill wasn’t in going viral. It was in remembering why I started posting in the first place.