Nearly a year ago, I started a website, and it was meant to be where I dumped my thoughts, maybe to make someone laugh or feel a little less alone out there.

I had no clue how much more it would be beyond 'just' writing.

I'm coding things Idon't understand, fixing things I didn't break, paying for crap I didn't know I needed, SEO, marketing, site tweaking, pitching, networking, and searches like, why are my analytics exploding with sketchy bots?

And of course, social media, which is unfortunate, because I’m a writer and I haaaate making videos of myself. Hate it.

I'm a behind-the-scenes kind of person; I chose a medium where nobody has to see me.

Now, prior to this, I’d done a few reaction videos on my daughter's TikTok, which was fine. I could be mildly amusing and be gone.

But with my own page, I procrastinated and told myself I had more important things to focus on, which was technically true.

It was also avoidance. I'm nothing if not somewhat self-aware.

After a long, crazy day, I was about to head outside for a walk with The Balkan Storm when my daughter said, ‘Hey, come do a TikTok with me real quick.”

Um, no.

I was a hot mess. No makeup, messy hair, wearing my 'nobody's going to see me today anyway' 'fit.

She rolled her eyes and said, “Oh, just come do this real quick; it's fine. Nobody’s gonna see it anyway.”

So anyway we went viral.

I looked like hell but knew all the words to a 90's rap song, and for whatever reason, people liked it.

I’ve spent somuchtime writing, learning, tweaking, and questioning everything…and this is what takes off?

I mean, I'm thrilled, but also...seriously?

Last weekend, author and speaker Carlos Whitaker spoke to our group about a video of his that went viral years ago, and his takeaway was that people crave authenticity.

Which, yeah, but authenticity has become a bit subjective now, hasn't it?

Half the 'spontaneous' crap we see is painfully, sometimes obviously, staged.

I'm not making fun of it; that's just content creation.

Writing isn't exactly spontaneous either. Even when I'm pouring my guts onto the page (nice visual), I still pull back and rearrange things and cut my ramblings.

Most of the time, anyway. 

But our stupid little video had no intention beyond: let me do this real quick so my daughter will leave me alone for the night.

And either that's part of why it worked, or people just really love Shoop.

Your guess is as good as mine.

I did learn one thing, though: algorithms don't give a shit how hard you work on something. That throwaway video dominated stuff I've spent time on.

I do not have to like this reality to acknowledge it.

But once I looked past the numbers, the comments became the more interesting aspect. People were talking about their moms and how that song was a part of their youth, when Shoop was everywhere.

Nostalgia. I get that.

That connection between life stories and stupid little pop culture moments is why I started all of this in the first place.

I also still have no idea what I’m doing over there – I barely have it together here. But as I’ve learned the hard way, the best moments tend to happen when you least expect them anyway.

And the algorithm can do with that what it will.

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This seems to work, so I'll keep doing it.

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