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Rant: I used to chase viral posts by gut, now I check TikTok trends at 6am with a spreadsheet
Back in 2019 I just posted whatever felt funny and hoped it hit, but after watching a dumb video of mine get 2 million views in a day in Austin, I started tracking sounds, hashtags, and posting times in a Google Sheet every morning. Now I spend more time staring at the For You page than actually making stuff, and half my "wins" feel like I just guessed the algorithm right. Does anyone else miss when going viral was mostly luck, or am I the only one who turned this into homework?
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aaronclark11d ago
Man, you nailed it with the homework line. What gets me is that the spreadsheet itself becomes the job, so you end up optimizing for what the sheet can measure instead of what actually made the dumb video funny in the first place. Then the numbers start lying to you too, since a sound that popped last Tuesday is already dead by Friday and you're basically tracking yesterday's weather. I'd bet the 2019 version of you was reading the room better than any trend page ever could, because that gut read was the real skill and the sheet just gave you a way to second guess it.
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