By Rebekah Anne

When thinking about viral videos, I can think of everything from TikTok to YouTube and even Vine from years ago. but what is really a viral video? and what makes them go so viral?

For where social media is currently is so easy to become ” famous ” and have a large number of people following you, I know a few people myself that have over 50k on TikTok alone. A lot of us have this little feeling inside that wants to be one of those people who is popping up on People for You Pages, Instagram feed, and youtube recommendation but how do we get there? How do you develop content that a large number of people will want to watch and keep coming back to?

Well first of all you have to make the content, you have to be actively developing content within your own niche. So often I see “days in the life” or “ hauls “ that are intriguing to me and I’ll be honest if you were to find my TikTok you might see some of those videos that I have made myself. But none of mine have gone viral per se. But the girls that do have their “ hauls “ go viral, have found the sweet spot. Most of the people I know who have gone viral did not do it on purpose but by complete accident, they posted something they thought a few friends would see, and then all of the sudden they have 100,000 views on one video alone. Now obviously the algorithm has to do with it some, pushing videos to people who view similar videos and accounts, and once you have a certain number of likes and views the algorithm pushes your content out like wildfire. 

But why is it important to know why you see these “ viral “ videos? Well because in the age of social media we all can come together and essentially bond over these videos and/or pictures. Think about the Yanny and laurel viral sensation. For weeks every time I was on social media, I would see something about “ do you hear Yanny or Laurel? “ it brought together the social media community as a whole. And that is what viral videos do. Now they don’t go viral for only that reason though, they go viral because it was the right video at the right time that caught enough people’s attention at the right time. 

So next time you see a viral video or even maybe you go viral, you’ll think about this… going viral is a really cool thing but think about why it went viral.