What It’s Really Like to Go Viral on Social Media
More than five years of human life have now been spent watching James pull a dead mouse out of my shoe.🤯
That sentence 👆 feels insane to write.
But our Instagram video has received more than 6.1 million views, over 30,000 interactions, and 5 YEARS, 86 days, three hours, 16 minutes, and 35 seconds of collective watch time. Every one of those views came from someone who did not already follow us.
All because of the curiosity of a mouse.🐁
I had left my winter slippers in the guest bedroom while we were away in Arizona for winter. During that time, a mouse must have crawled inside one of them and died. I hope that it was a cozy final resting place for it. But dang, was it not fun to realize.
I discovered it in the least pleasant way possible: by putting my bare foot into the slipper and feeling it. 🤢
I immediately yelped, pulled my foot out, and tried to remove it myself. It was wedged so tightly inside that I could not get it out, so I asked James to help.
One of my friends had said she wanted me to share more of the less glamorous aspects of living in the mountains, so this seemed like a perfect real-life moment of that reality.
So I filmed James getting it out.
It took him 1 minute and 43 seconds, to be exact.
Apparently, that was an unforgivable amount of time to ask from the internet. 🤬
People called James an idiot. They called us assholes who had wasted their lives. They said the video was intentionally drawn out so we could make money from online advertisements.
Spoiler alert: we do not have ads or earn money from the video.
They told us it took James his “whole lifespan” to remove the mouse. Someone suggested that next time, we should begin the video “at the birth of Christ.” Others said he was mentally challenged.
Some comments were supportive or funny. We can laugh at ourselves, and the situation was objectively ridiculous. Mountain life has a way of reminding you that paradise is not always rainbows and sunshine.
But eventually, the comments began to feel like people needed someone to punish. 😤
I always thought going viral would be a cool experience. Perhaps even something to celebrate or consider some sort of milestone in making a big impact. But instead, it became a fascinating peek into humanity at scale.
The most revealing part was not that people disliked the video. No one was required to enjoy it. They could have stopped watching. They could have fast-forwarded. They could have decided that watching a man struggle to pull a dead mouse out of a slipper was not how they wanted to spend the next two minutes of their lives.
Instead, many watched until the end and then invested even more of their time telling us how angry they were that we had wasted it.
This one guy was particularly cruel, so we looked him up. And his profile reads, “Be kind to all kinds.” The irony of how some people see themselves vs how they behave is very real.
That contradiction stayed with me.
Attention is part of our life force. More than five collective years of it have now been directed toward this tiny, strange moment from our deck. Thousands of people gave additional minutes to criticizing, defending, arguing, mocking, and replying.
It made me present with how much suffering so many people are carrying. And when you reach people on a massive scale, you can feel the energy of that pain more than usual.
How much anger has nowhere safe to go.
How often a comment section becomes the place where someone unloads pain that was created somewhere else.
That does not excuse cruelty. But it does help me see that these comments were never only about a mouse—or how long it took James to remove it.
Going viral turns a human being into content. Strangers see 103 seconds and decide they understand your intelligence, your intentions, your character, and your worth.
And what’s particularly wild is that triggering anger and frustration is the very last thing we ever would have chosen to go viral for. I mean, we literally teach people how to regulate their emotions professionally…
Having said that, we are grateful that more people who resonate with our content are following us now. And that sharing our life out west has viral possibilities. Yay! 🤠
So we will keep sharing what matters to us. We will keep setting boundaries. We will keep rewilding. And we’ll keep inviting you to join us.
Now tell me… do you wanna see this stinkin video? 🤣 If you do, don’t say I didn’t warn ya!
You can watch our viral video here.
Please follow us on Instagram (@marybethandjames) to see more behind-the-scenes and an up-close-and-personal view of life on the ranch. 💗
Let’s spread more love in this world!
