Why ‘going viral’ is overrated

In case you’re wondering, the most popular video on YouTube is the toxic brain worm Baby Shark Dance. It has over 8.2 billion views.

And from that one example, we tend to measure everything that comes after.  Digital has screwed up our idea of what it means to go viral. We’re not happy unless we get into the hyper-inflated numbers typical of social media influencers. Maybe not Baby Shark numbers, but definitely in the millions.

But does that mean that something that doesn’t hit these numbers is a failure? An old stat I found said that over half of YouTube videos have less than 500 views. I couldn’t find a more recent tally, but I suspect that’s still true.

And, if it is, my immediate thought is that those videos must suck. They weren’t worth sharing. They didn’t have what it takes to go viral. They are forever stuck in the long, long tail of YouTube wannabes.

But is going viral all it’s cracked up to be?