How Going Viral Became My Drug — And Nearly Ruined My Life

I started blogging in 2015.

10 years ago!

I was 22 years old back then, and I wanted to be a full-time travel blogger. Problem was, I was getting 0 views on my dinky Wordpress blog.

I wrote 5 or 6 posts before I got a comment, and it was from this girl I secretly had a crush on in high school.

She wrote a nice comment. “Tom, I really love your writing. I just wanted you to know that.”

After hearing crickets for weeks, that comment was like crack cocaine. It’s interesting, because the more I’ve grown, the more I realize that my own deep-seated need for validation drove me to where I am today.

I’ve built massive followings online. I used to have a Facebook Page with half a million followers. My Youtube Channel has 160,000 subscribers. I had an interview with Rolling Stone Philippines last week, and the interviewer said they still saw my name pop up on reddit threads in the Philippines.

It’s been five years since I made videos about that country.

I don’t mean to say all this in a cocky way. I just want to give you the context here. I have tasted online success in ways few have—it’s just a fact.

And I’m here to tell you that it was so addicting that I made it my entire f*cking life.

There’s lots of creators I see here on Substack who teach you things like “How To Build A $10,000 Per Month Online Biz” and shit. That’s cool, and good for them, but I’m almost positive that they’re absolute slaves to work, likes, money, and subscribers. It’s definitely more likely than unlikely that that’s the case.

I know because I was them, and still am them to a certain extent.

They are leading people to a well that is bone dry.

For me, it doesn’t matter if you are making $1,000,000 per year, if you’re unhappy, and your life is totally consumed by your work, then it’s not worth it.

When readers tell me “Tom, I’m not getting any likes!” what I really hear is “Tom, I won’t feel whole until I get X.”

Here’s the truth, though: You won’t feel whole even if you get X.

Because nothing we accomplish can ever make us whole. We got to make ourselves whole. We got to accept ourselves, and trust that, even though nobody is reading, we’re writing some sh*t that matters.

Because it does matter.

Back in 2017, I became obsessed with Gary Vaynerchuk. Many people consider him like the Godfather of social media or whatever. I have no idea whether he’s even still popular, but he was back then.

I remember he used to say stuff like “Close your eyes until your 30” and “You need to post 30 times on social media per day.” I’m paraphrasing, but he legitimately endorsed behaviors like these.

I ate it up like McDonalds hotcakes.

In 2017, Gary’s hustle bug bit me hard, and I started posting blogs daily on Medium.com. Around the same time, I got obsessed with Casey Neistat. He posted a daily vlog for like 2 years straight on Youtube, and these vlogs were so well-filmed, edited, and produced, that he racked up over 10,000,000 subscribers in 600 days.

He was and STILL IS an absolute genius. And I wanted to be him. I wanted to film, edit, and post a vlog every day. So, in 2018, I started a Youtube channel where I posted a vlog every day.

Aaaaaand I burned out after a month. 😂

But I kept the Youtube channel going, and switched to weekly videos instead.

In May I went to the Philippines for a month, then Bali for another month, then Vietnam for 3 weeks. It was unreal, but the amount of time I spent making videos and writing blogs was immense. I never got to enjoy my time to its fullest extent in these spectacular places.

But I was making money, so. *thumbs up*

I did have nice moments, though. I know that. I learned so much. I transformed into a totally different human being.

But I was always anxious, you know? Always thinking about my next video. Always rushing. Everywhere. Why? I have no idea. I didn’t need to rush.

There were always these deadlines in my head.

“You got to publish a video by Wednesday to stay on track, Tom!”
“You got to launch your course next month, Tom!”

It was just constant to-do’s. But Gary Vee told me to close my eyes until I was 30, so. *thumbs up?*

Sometimes I wonder whether there is any way to do social media in a healthy way. In some ways it’s like working in a bar as a recovering alcoholic. I mean, shit. Is it possible? Yeah. Is it ideal? Absolutely not.

First it’s the dopamine. It’s seeing the red notifications come through at lightning speed. It’s borderline impossible to resist wanting more unless you’re like, Jesus, or something. It is an absolute rush to go viral.

I legitimately think it’s as potent as doing drugs.

So, you’re going to want more, right?

I got into poker in 2022. Hard. I loved it. I played so many tournaments. It was such a rush to go into the poker room that my body shook. Looking back, I realize that I played poker because I needed to replace the dopamine hits I was missing after deleting my vlog and seeing my Medium statistics decline into oblivion.

Yeah.

When I see all these Substack gurus talk about nothing but making money and going viral and ALL THAT SHIT, it triggers me so hard. Going to their Substack homepage is like going into a casino with all the green and red lines, and money emojis, and headlines promising you the world.

I know I play that game, too. I’m guilty. I know. I try to at least be fair and post about other stuff. I try to be as honest as possible with the results I promise.

But the truth of the matter is, that kind of content goes absolutely bonkers viral and drives so many paid and free subscriptions.

It’s like a lightbulb for moths or something. It’s like a tractor beam that just magnetizes people in to giving that person their money.

The creators need to make that content to make money.
The buyers need to buy it to learn how to go viral.

The problem is, the creators who make this content have only made money writing about how to make money blogging.

You might say “Tom, you’re one of those, aren’t ya!”

NO! I’m not. I tracked how many articles I wrote in each topic on Medium, and writing wasn’t even my most popular one.

I wrote a lot about self-help, and travel, and relationships, even.

Sorry, I just needed to say that before everybody and their mother cancelled me.

It’s just.. this is the fact of the matter. This whole economy that we’re part of as bloggers and readers is shady as hell. I’m not against teaching people how to write better, but sometimes I wish we’d all just collectively chill the f*ck out with our headlines and promises.

I really do.

Because even if you do everything a creator tells you to, you’re probably going to end up in an unhappy place, endlessly chasing metrics, constantly wanting more.

That’s the feedback loop I got trapped in years ago.

I was reaching tens of thousands of people with my videos on Facebook, yet I mourned the days when I was reaching millions. 50,000 views on a video was a failure. Fuck man, that’s not a failure. That’s amazing. But see? I’m still half-basing why it matters on view counts.

Na, Tom, it mattered because you made a video you believed in. That’s why.

I’ve been in this game for 10 years, and seen so many gurus come and go. It almost pissed me off when someone would swoop in with, apparently, zero writing experience and teach people how to write better online.

Then they’d promise the absolute world with the craziest headlines and numbers and everything while I tried to stay, well, honorable with what I promised. Then they’d steal all my clients away promising the world and delivering air.

It’s just… a little dirty is all.

I just wanted to call all of this out today. I know I am guilty. As a writing coach, it’s just a fact that people want to go viral. I try to teach people how to go viral while not losing themselves in the process. I try to teach both at the same time.

Just be careful. Be ever vigilant of your ego. It could rear its ugly head and turn you into a metric chasing monster. You don’t need that. You’re good enough already. If you go viral, that’s great, but it doesn’t define your worth as a creator or a human being. Trust me, some of the stupidest crap goes viral. If that’s the case, why are we judging the worth of what we’ve created on whether or not it went viral?

Just some food for thought.

Thanks for reading.