The 5 Coolest Things That Happened After I Went Viral on Twitter

Published in

The Startup

5 min readDec 28, 2020

All I wanted in 2020 was to go viral on Twitter. I know this is silly and trivial in the grand scheme, but it’s been such a miserable year and this was a dumb, small piece of validation that I really, really wanted.

It seemed like everyone else was getting viral tweets (by which I mean my friends on Comedy Twitter), but it would never happen to me. The closest I got was tweeting about how I missed Penn Station so much I wanted to poop in my apartment just to feel like I was there.

I was constantly oscillating between convincing myself it didn’t matter while also secretly praying for it. The truth of the matter is that it doesn’t really matter if you go viral or not — it’s consistency that matters. There are plenty of people who go viral once or twice but are still averaging 5–20 likes per tweet.

But on the other hand, of course it matters. Going viral feels like the ultimate gift from the Twitter gods. And it’s also just cool. I had gone viral once before, in February, for a tweet about my messy bedroom (PS: are you watching my new project Hoarders Game show?).

I hadn’t yet figured out how to brand myself on comedy Twitter, so I didn’t get much out of that first viral tweet except for a couple hundred new followers, but it was still extremely cool. So what if a few hundred British people called me a “clatty cunt” in the comments? I was so ready to go viral again, and pretty sure it would like, change my life or something. (Hey, it’s a pandemic, and to reiterate, I don’t have a ton going on right now!)

It didn’t change my life but going viral again was a huge dopamine hit. If you’re on the verge of giving up at Twitter or social media yourself, I’m here to tell you, don’t! It happened for me, and it could happen for you. Keep at it and keep trying — it’s a noble goal!