I Tried Being a Viral TikToker for a Week, Here’s How It Went….
I didn’t intend for this week of my life to become a social experiment.
I enjoyed a night with one of my closest friends. It was one of those nights where you hang out at home, drink a few too many bottles of wine, and have no time constraints because neither of you must be anywhere. The wine and the good times whisked us away to a place where we were dying of laughter at moms on TikTok, lip-syncing to old songs we loved from the 90s, and doing dances that would embarrass our teens into oblivion.
This fun turned into a realization that the people whose content we were enjoying were equally funny and entertaining as we were. So, we pressed the button that switches the phone camera to face us and started filming silly, fun clips (of me), dancing along with the bottles of wine that had sparked this outburst of comedic expression!
Without a moment of clarity, we posted the videos and continued our night hanging out.
The next morning, I woke to find my phone and Instagram had blown up with likes, comments, and DMs telling me how much people loved the videos and had never laughed so much in their lives.
Even though I had a raging headache (from all the elixir the night before), I realized that I also hadn’t had that much fun in a really long time. I hadn’t laughed like that for weeks.
I had been so focused on building my business and ceo-ing, that I was too busy trying to keep all the plates in the air for work and family that I had forgotten about the life part. The part that actually fills me with happiness and inspiration to keep going each day.
Laughing is my love language, I love to make people laugh, and I am drawn to people who make me laugh.
And so the second part of my experiment had begun without a pause for a moment of conscious thought.
I figured if I had had this much fun posting a few silly dance videos to Instagram, then surely mastering TikTok could be fun too?
And so, the monster had been created.
So, I hopped onto TikTok, set up an account under a pseudonym that wouldn’t lead back to me, and posted those dance videos.
Within an hour of posting, I had 80 followers and over 300 views of my videos.
The beast was being fed.
···
The Moment Things Took a Turn
Ever since I launched Suggesterfy, I’ve made no secret of the constant ‘struggle-juggle’ I cope with to keep my kids alive, my house clean, food in the fridge, and work on budgets, marketing, development, and strategy for my business.
I’ve had meltdowns I’m not proud of.
I’ve sat on the couch after a long day, staring into space, nursing glass after glass of wine, feeling utterly numb. I felt that life had been sucked out of me after a huge day of Zoom meetings, school runs, kids’ activities, homework, and spreadsheets.
I’ve ordered dinner so many times on Uber Eats for my family, that the delivery people know my name and address without needing to look at their GPS to find me.
I’ve (shamefully) pulled school uniforms out of the dirty laundry basket to give to my kids to wear, because I’ve not had time to get the washing done.
I’ve had numerous phone calls and SMS messages from my daughters, who have arrived at school and have no lunch because I haven’t been to the supermarket or found the time to do an online grocery order.
Basically, I’ve dropped the ball more times in the last year and a half than I thought was ever possible.
Clearly, this did not go unnoticed by my children, who on the past Mother’s Day, failed to do anything reminiscent of preparing something special to show just a smidgen of appreciation for all that they know I do for them…
The Mother’s Day Fiasco
It was the Mother’s Day morning of extreme disappointments. A lunch had been planned at my sister’s house to celebrate my own mum and grandmother, so I told my husband there was no need for all of us in our home to go out for breakfast (something we usually did each year on Mother’s Day). I didn’t want to feel rushed about getting to my sister’s house on time, and my oldest child made it abundantly clear that she did not want to be woken up early, so I figured we could all use the lie in, and I was looking forward to those few extra hours of being a lazy bed-potato.
Unfortunately for me, at 6 am that morning, my bladder had other ideas about letting me sleep in late…
I woke up with the most extreme urge to pee, so extreme that I had no opportunity to lay in bed and wait for the morning wee to creep back up the pipes and revisit me later, so I could go back to sleep….
I was up, at 6am, breaking the seal, and then my Golden Retriever greeted me with the face of “it’s time to go for a walk”.
There are many things in this life I avoid or put off until later, but walking my pooch is not one of them.
So, I got moving, ready to go for our walk.
The whole family, my daughters, my son, and my husband were still fast asleep in bed, until the moment when I was just about to walk out the door, and my son appeared.
I was so excited to see him. I thought that he was going to throw his arms around me, and thank me for giving him life, when instead he said, “mum, can you make me breakfast before you go for your walk?”…….
I realize most other mothers would say, ‘hell no’ to such a request, but due to my feelings of late that I had been a pretty absent mama, I caved in and threw some nutritious Pop-Tarts in the toaster and gave them to him as I took the dog out the front door.
The Moment TikTok Took Over
As I walked down the street, I felt a moment of extreme rage take over.
I was so angry. So, irrationally angry.
I was angry with myself for agreeing to make breakfast for my son, a task he’s perfectly capable of and has done in the past.
I was angry that I had given in to an unfair demand of making him breakfast as I was already walking out the door.
I was angry at the rest of my family for not waking up early and giving me any sort of acknowledgement that I was appreciated as their primary caretaker.
I was angry at my bladder for waking me up and disturbing what could have been a leisurely Sunday morning lay in.
So, I did what most irrational people do at a time when rage was flowing through their veins…. I took to social media.
TikTok Made Me Do It
As I walked the streets with my puppy, I started venting to my phone camera. I recorded four videos of myself, ranting and raving about what a lousy Mother’s Day this was turning into, and how unappreciated I felt.
I made crazy threats to my camera about quitting being a parent. I swore I would never enter the laundry room again, or even consider preparing a meal for my family. I vowed to take revenge (in the most wholesome way) on my family, so they would see how much I do and start pulling their own weight around our house.
Whilst still in a completely irrational state, I posted the video to TikTok.
Venting to my camera felt good. Cathartic. It was like I had let go of all the intense frustration I was feeling and was able to part ways with my negative mindset.
Later that day, once I had calmed down and had a glass of bubbly with my grandmother, fear of being exposed online set in.
I was not concerned about being exposed to 20 million strangers, but more so, I was worried about what my friends and specifically my family would think of this heinous meltdown, and in such a public forum.
So, I did what any irrational over-sharer would do, and I jumped back onto TikTok and blocked all the accounts of my immediate family.
I blocked my kids, I blocked my husband, I blocked my best friends. I was petrified that somehow the TikTok algorithm would place my tantrum in front of them, the moment they opened the app.
Feeling satiated with my cover-up plan, I then started to look around TikTok.
Although TikTok has taken the world by storm, and possessed the full attention of my children, it’s not been an app that I’ve ever been interested in. I always thought that if I wanted to watch videos of people, I could do that on Instagram (my preferred choice of social media).
After a serious amount of time had been sucked into watching videos, I noticed the navigation bar at the bottom showed that I had 300 messages in an inbox! I saw that suddenly, I had 1049 followers, and 22.2K likes.
My one raving lunatic video received 183.5K views!
The Dopamine Rush
I felt quite dizzy with excitement.
I was receiving hundreds of messages from other women who were also having a shitty Mother’s Day, telling me stories of why their day was so crap.
I was receiving accolade messages such as, “You go girl”, or “That’s it! It’s time for all mothers to stand up and demand to be appreciated”!
In a behavioral health blog titled “Are You Addicted to Social Media?” authored by Lee Health, Paul G. Simeone, Ph.D. is quoted as saying: “On social media, when a user gets a like, a retweet, or an emoticon notification, the brain receives a flood of dopamine and sends it along reward pathways. It feels wonderful, but it also acts to reinforce our need to satisfy the feeling next time. This cycle of motivation, reward, and reinforcement is a ‘dopamine loop’ that gets users seeking, looking, and craving rewards — and more of them”.
My brain was flooded with dopamine.
For the next few days, I became completely obsessed with checking the number of views and reading all the comments on my video.
People were commenting in huge volumes asking to see the aftermath of what happened next. Had I taken revenge? What revenge had I taken? Did I cave into parental responsibility and end up doing the washing and cooking as I swore I would never do again?
I have always been a fiercely independent person. I despise having to answer to anyone and I always make my choices and decisions (some, completely questionable) based on what I want to do.
In this situation, I must blame the dopamine.
Monday morning, when the kids left for school and the husband for work, rather than working through an intensely long work to-do list, I spent the morning filming TikTok videos to create part 2 of what happened after Mother’s Day.
The video was a complete parody of me walking around my house showing the empty fridge and saying I wasn’t planning to fill it. I added some wild scenes to illustrate my stance against the injustice of my daughter never bringing down her dirty laundry. For instance, I placed her worn underwear inside her pillowcase, so she would realize the importance of laundry hygiene — something I always jokingly threaten her with!
(*The underwear I filmed were actually a perfectly clean pair I took from her freshly laundered clothes basket, that I had minutes ago finished folding. I also did not leave them there.)
It was supposed to be a parody. A joke. Not something to be taken seriously.
I downloaded CapCut, (an editing app for people who film a lot of TikTok’s) I spliced, I transitioned, I overlayed, I filtered, and I added sounds and animations to my video. I added captions and hashtags, and then I posted it.
The next 24 hours I was like a heroin addict looking for my next fix.
I must’ve checked my TikTok account every 10 minutes to see the likes, comments and views.
This second video amassed 72 THOUSAND views.
I was receiving even more messages from people encouraging me, egging me on, saying things such as, “I am living for this!”, “please report back on the reactions from your family” and “this is brilliant!”.
Shakespeare famously said, “All the world’s a stage”, and at this very moment, after seeing the response from my second video, my world became a stage for TikToks.
The Epic Come Down
There was no turning back now, I had fans. I had to give the people what they wanted, and they wanted the sequel to the story. I put a superhuman amount of effort into creating part 3 of what was now trending as “#Mum’sRevenge”.
I felt like Steven Speilberg, directing my theatrical opus.
I was overcome with excitement about how this last video would be received, how many views and comments I would get this time.
I exhibited the same obsessive behavior as before. I checked, double-checked, my TikTok account all throughout the day. I watched other TikToks to gain inspiration for my future videos. I was like a 14-year-old boy who for the first time had just discovered that they can spend private time in the bathroom!
It seemed it was a slow day on the Tok.
Tumbleweeds.
Babkis.
By that evening, I saw barely any numbers. So what if 1000 people had watched the video? That number to a seasoned TikTok performer is pathetic. An embarrassment.
I felt so deflated.
There was no more dopamine flowing freely throughout my body.
I was now overcome with a depletion of serotonin. I had no more feel-good, happy hormones.
I was nothing but a washed-up, tossed-out, former TikTok star.
To find out where I had gone wrong, I began reading all the comments on my videos.
The Trolls
In recent years, the conversation about how social media affects mental health has truly taken center stage. It’s impossible to ignore — you’ve got endless research papers, articles, polls, blogs, and even documentaries and television shows, all shedding light on the profound influence of social media on our society.
Back in 2021, TikTok introduced a game-changer to their comment features. Wanting to tackle cyberbullying and unsavory behavior, they added a neat option for users. You could select a setting that filtered out certain keywords or offensive comments.
TikTok also added a message to potential trolls to ask them to reconsider their post in the event they were posting a comment that could be read as offensive.
I think this is a brilliant initiative. Anything that can protect somebody’s mental health is a positive move. I am by no means an expert in this field, but I can say, from experience, that reading all the comments posted by people who you don’t know personally, is a recipe for a bout of serious depression.
Many comments I received on my videos were as I previously wrote, incredibly positive. I genuinely did feel like I was a part of this diverse community of women who had the very same struggles in common, that they were also hard-working mums, who often felt undervalued.
The threads created in these comments under my videos became a place where these women on TikTok started sharing their experiences of how hard each day can be. They posted comments about feeling isolated, forgotten and overlooked by the people who mattered most to them.
Some threads were hilarious, with fun banter being thrown back and forward about various maternal situations, and some were tales of heartbreak, with mothers who posted about having horrendous issues with their ex-husbands that prevented them from seeing their children.
To be honest, it was the sense of camaraderie being created that was what I loved the most about the effects of the videos I had posted.
But as they say, nothing good lasts forever. The content of these videos I posted were much like the comments being shared, they reflected a moment in time.
By the time I posted ‘part 3’ of my video trilogy, the initial online excitement had stopped. And so had the comments of enthusiasm and humor.
Even though the videos had all been posted days earlier, they must have still been floating around on the feeds. Because the views, likes and comments continued. But the comments had started taking a turn down a dark path.
Reading through the threads of comments, I noticed that there were now new comments responding to the good-natured ones. These comments were aimed at tearing people down and shaming them for the posts they had shared.
Here is one example:
TikTokker1: “I threw a huge first Father’s Day for my partner last year, and yesterday, on Mother’s Day, I got nothing, I’ve been so sad all day”.
Troll: “things that never happened”
TikTokker1: (in response to Troll) “do you need me to post photos of proof?’
Troll: “listen to you, truth hurts huh, rant rant rant…. your fella has my condolences, his life must be hell”.
What the actual fuck?!
Why would anyone waste their time responding like this to a heartfelt comment posted from a woman expressing her sadness?
Why are people so mean?
The answer is because some people are just assholes.
I also received messages from women saying horrible things to me, telling me it’s my fault my kids didn’t appreciate me because I’m obviously a shitty parent. I received a fair few messages telling me that I’m pathetic for raising such rude children and it’s people like me who were raising the future domestic violence offenders in the community! There were comments about my appearance, the way I spoke, you name it, they went there.
I’ve always considered myself someone with a healthy high self-esteem. The comments from these trolls did not offend me, but they did have me worried about the part I may be playing in the frame of mind of some of the kind women who had commented. I did not want to be responsible to creating a forum for people to bully and shame others, and I also didn’t relish inviting this sort of negativity into my life.
The Aftermath
Could I have turned off the ability to comment on my videos? Yes
Could I have posted a retaliation video calling out the assholes who were behind those keyboards? Also yes.
Did I do either? No.
Abbie Chatfield has been in the media recently discussing her mental health state. MammaMia reported a story on Abbie exposing the struggles that many influencers and people in the public eye rarely talk about (https://www.mamamia.com.au/abbie-chatfield-mental-health/).
Abbie had done a photo shoot for Stellar Magazine. The pictures were beautiful, she looked sultry and elegant with the article title being “Why Abbie Chatfield Can’t Be Shamed”. After the article was published, Abbie took to her Instagram to share the reality of what she had been feeling lately. She reported saying that as she checked the photo shoot test shots, she didn’t “recognize the person in the photos”.
She had been crying all day. She had been feeling stressed and tired but at the same time had felt guilty about being perceived as “ungrateful” when the public eye is all glitter and gold, and that the people in the magazines don’t have bad days because they have it all?!
The point Abbie Chatfield was making is that on most days she loves her life, but nobody ever really knows what goes on behind closed doors.
My few days as a TikTok “Star” were by no means in the same realm as Abbie Chatfield’s.
Me feeling deflated by a bunch of evil and mean-spirited keyboard warriors was hardly a skeric of what Abbie must experience. She probably gets hit with this type of shit all day every day across many platforms.
The Bigger Picture
I have chosen to reflect on that week as a lesson. I was never planning on telling anyone who I really was as the person behind the TikTok account. But I felt that there were deeper messages here that I wanted to share.
One of these messages is authenticity. I succeeded on TikTok with that first video of me venting like a drunk sailor because I was being authentic, I was real. This authenticity was evident to all the people who liked and commented. In my subsequent videos I wasn’t authentic, I was trying to be a parody of myself and that clearly showed.
As the Boss Lady of social discovery app, Suggesterfy, the responsibility falls on my shoulders to keep our platform true to what it is; a place for people to share positive and helpful suggestions and recommendations with their trusted network. Our number one core value at Suggesterfy is trust, with number two being positivity.
My other message is that, positivity is key. We created Suggesterfy as an alternative way to use apps to source information, this alternative being that there were no trolls, no offensive content, no place for keyboard warriors.
How do we do that?
With Suggesterfy, you connect to the people you know and trust. The people that comment on your posts are people you already have a relationship with. You control your own visibility. Suggesterfy is a place to ask questions to find the help you need. Perhaps you are looking for a great restaurant to hold a private group dinner and you can’t think of anywhere to go? You post your question and your trusted community can give you suggestions with images, links to maps and more information. Perhaps you are looking for a gardner? You don’t want just anyone you have seen advertised have access to your home, you want a recommendation from someone you trust, you can find that too.
Or maybe you have just had the most incredible customer service from a store that you had never visited before. You can see this store has no real advertising and was badly affected by the covid lockdowns. You feel compelled to tell everyone you know about thhis store because the experience you had was just that good. So you can post this as a suggestion on Suggesterfy. This store will now receive more visibility, and hopefully more business.
The use cases for suggesterfy are endless. But the core values remain the same, trust and positivity.
My short lived career as a TikTokker has come to an end. The account remains and I need to decide what I want to do with it. I have turned off the commenting too. I am not someone who can live a life of secrecy, pretending to be someone I am not. I am at times a crazy person who screams and vents out of frustration. I am at times a mother who suffers from an imbalance in the work-life-family area. I am flawed, and I often make some questionable choices. I am often at times a distracted partner; an absent friend and I definitely do not brush my Golden Retreiver enough. But much like Suggesterfy, I am a work in progress. I will continue to build the same forum of comraderie in my own app, or I may end up having another very public meltdown trying!
Suggesterfy is available on the IOS App Store and Google Play AppStore.
