7 Crazy Things That Happened After My Video Went Viral

"Holy Moly," I stammered.

"What?" my brother replied.

"I just got 40,000 views in five minutes."

And so it began.

I knew for a while I was about to be featured by NowThis because of an article I wrote for The Mission.

One day I received a message on Facebook from one of their representatives. They said they were SUPER interested in sharing my story.

I couldn't believe it. I knew full well what NowThis was. I see one of their videos on my feed every couple days.

Knowing this, I still didn't know what to expect. How many views would I actually get? What would be their angle? Would anyone message me afterward? I tried not to get my hopes up, because most times when you get your hopes up about something, it really doesn't go that well.

I just did what they wanted, expected nothing, and didn't really pay that much attention to it at all.

Then they published the video out of nowhere on a Saturday. You could say they had my attention, then.

Within 50 minutes the video already received 2,000 views and about 35 shares. It was incredible. I was in shock for a bit, but all I knew was I had to share it on my page and at least address it.

Over the next six hours the shares, comments, and views came pouring in. By 6 p.m. I was at 12,000 views, which seemed incredible at the time.

What I didn't know was it was FAR from over.

To get my mind off the madness, I played a game of Call of Duty with my brother. By the end of the five-minute game, I checked the stats yet again:

48,048 views.

I was dumbfounded.

How the heck did it shoot up that quickly? Why did a hundred people share it within five minutes? What was the reason for this?

I realized ten minutes later that my video had been shared on the main NowThis Facebook page. What did this mean?

I had just graduated to being featured on an even bigger platform than I already was.

If anything, I hope to give you an inside look on what going viral actually feels like, and some general things you can expect out of all the madness. Here we go: