5 Takeaways from One Wild Day of Internet Fame

Sunday night, I was rushing home excited to stream the premier of the Game of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon. A block from my apartment, my attention was drawn by a profusion of Times Square-esque, coordinated flashing lights in an apartment building. With my mind on Daenerys Targaryen, I presumed they were all watching what I was missing, knowing the show began airing 30 minutes prior. I took a video and posted it on Twitter, which was typical, as I’ve tweeted over 8,000 times, never having gone viral. 1 million engagements, 8 million views, and 16 million impressions later, here are five takeaways of what happened when I went viral for a day on social media.

1.???“Virality” is about Relevance, Timeliness, Searchability and Engagement.

• Relevance: According to HBO, 10 million people streamed the Game of Thrones spinoff on night one. The viewership was the biggest start for a series in HBO history.
• Timeliness: I took and posted this video roughly 20 minutes before many people who streamed at 9pm finished the episode and went to social media to discuss. Those on-time-streamers were the first to engage with the tweet, followed by an international audience that joined the conversation overnight.
• Searchability: I used the show’s hashtag #HouseoftheDragon, tagged @HBO, and used popular search term “New York City” to make the tweet easy to discover.
• Engagement: When I began streaming around 10pm and saw the tweet gaining popularity, I (reluctantly) paused the episode so I could quickly create a follow-up meme in the replies to boost engagement. As most of my 8k tweets are sports related, I had to stay true to brand with my reply.

2.???The notifications are paralyzing.

• I woke up and opened Twitter to a screen I’ve never seen before: “Your tweet is producing a lot of notifications. Would you like to turn on the quality notification filter?” A feature I’ve naturally never heard about.
• The tweet had 1 million engagements in the first 24 hours. That’s 694 notifications per minute! and 11+ per second! Outside of my 2-hour Monday night basketball run, and of course, my client work, my eyes were glued to my phone all day and legitimately hurt by days end.
• The first big re-poster was Complex, who DM’d me on Twitter, asking to post to Instagram with credit to my handle. Shortly after, my notifications on Instagram blew up, with tags from friends, DMs from verified social accounts, and 100+ follow requests from strangers (all of which I declined as my Instagram is private, and I use only to engage with friends). So, I had two social apps blowing up – extremely overwhelming.

3.???A little bit of fame comes with detractors.

• At 9am, I received a bombardment of texts from friends telling me they saw my tweet and that someone else posted it on Tik Tok as their own with 10x more engagement! After “their video” had been featured on The Today Show and Good Morning America, I decided to reach out to them.
• I messaged the user on Twitter asking why they wouldn’t properly attribute my video to which they told me, “it’s not as easy to tag across platform,” and, “this type of stuff happens when you put stuff on the internet.”
• The truth is, I don’t care about “the credit.” I didn’t earn anything; I just posted a tweet. But as Nikola Tesla said, “I don't care that they stole my idea… I care that they don't have any of their own.”

4.???Admins of popular social handles are just people, though most were true to brand, even in private conversations.

• I DM’d with a plethora of social handles asking to use my content, including HBO, Complex, Barstool, Kale Salad, The Independent, UNILAD and many more. Some were straight to the point, while others engaged in conversation and showed their character.
• HBO looped me into their idea to mirror my video with the exact scene that was happening in that moment; Kale Salad was funny and sent me a contact to their licensing partner; A Norwegian media company sent me recommendations for my upcoming trip to Norway; and one influencer with 500k Twitter followers told me I “ruined their day” and they will “be sure to tell their followers how much [they] hate [me],” because I asked if his company would compensate me. We settled on the influencer agreeing to send me merch in exchange for the video (and not telling their followers they hate me!).

5.???Interesting videos CAN MAKE YOU MONEY… sometimes

• When I was 21 years old, I saw Johnny Manziel at Marquee Nightclub in NYC, swigging from an Ace of Spades bottle behind the DJ Booth. Naturally, I took a snapchat video and sent to my friends.
• The next morning, I sent a bunch of DMs to Barstool, TMZ Sports and others telling them I had this video (just to see what would happen), and quickly, TMZ Sports told me they’re writing a story about Manziel, and would pay me $150 for my video. Not my proudest moment, but a fun fact for a future dinner party (or LinkedIn article).
• Gleaning from that experience, I was careful not to grant anyone “exclusive rights” to the video without compensation. In my communications brain, this video would make for an awesome HBO commercial or marketing campaign, so I was hoping they were interested in striking a deal.
• What I learned from them, Barstool, and others, was that because it was already posted all over social media, paying for “exclusivity” was less attractive, though licensing partners were still interested. Could I have held off on Tweeting to spend Monday marketing this video privately and made some money? Probably. But that sounds less fun than a day of internet fame.

In the last few days, I’ve learned that 24 hours of internet time feels like an eternity in real-life. The biggest win this week was that somehow no one made fun of my super cool “Bkillinit” handle that I created in 7th grade. It's already been an exhausting week balancing my work life, personal life, and social media life, and while this was a fun experience, and it was great to hear from so many old friends and colleagues who saw the tweet, I’ve decided to retire from Twitter for the next 20 minutes (as I plot my next viral post).

See the thread of my takeaways on Twitter, and follow to be first to the next viral tweet!