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In February 2025, I decided to create a TikTok account for my Jessica Dukharan brand. I already had Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube accounts but I delayed getting on TikTok until I was sure I wanted to add another social media platform to my orbit.
I wanted to have fun with content creation again and document my glow up journey.
The second video I posted on TikTok was an ASMR lint trap cleaning video that was two minutes long. It gained a lot of attention and engagement shortly after I posted it.
In the screenshots below, you will see the views jump from 53,000 to 203,000 to 918,000 to 1.1 million in one month.
I have a screenshot that I took on November 2, 2025 that shows the video had two million views then. I can’t say for sure that’s when the video accumulated two million views since I stopped checking the views for it after a while. However, I can say that I got two million views within one year for a video that was posted on my brand new TikTok account.
While many people aspire to have their videos go viral on social media, they’re not always aware of the consequences of going viral.
As a result, I want to share my takeaways from that viral moment.
Takeaway 1: People will watch a longer short-form video if it’s interesting to them.
As mentioned before, that video was two minutes long. Many people will tell you to make your videos short, have transitions and cool edits in it, and keep the clips short to keep people watching longer. We’re constantly told that people have short attention spans so we have to create videos in a way that will hold their attention for more than three seconds.
My video shows that you don’t have to follow popular advice to get a video to go viral. The only edits I made were to cut the dead air out from when I was moving from one dryer to the next. I also added text on screen to show that it was an ASMR video.
ASMR videos are popular because the sounds are satisfying to listen to and in that video, you can hear the sound of me brushing the lint off from the lint trays. Other than that and the edits I mentioned before, I didn’t do much to the video.
The fluffy lint itself was interesting and the audience got to see my real-time facial expressions and reactions when I was taking out the lint trays from the dryer lint traps.
Those are the things that made the video interesting to people.
If you’ve seen other viral videos, then you may notice that the reason the video was interesting was the content creator shared a compelling story, the video was hilarious, or the video was relatable to you. As long as the video is interesting to the viewer, they will watch it all the way through and even multiple times despite the length of the video.
Takeaway 2: The notifications and comments can become overwhelming.
For the caption of that video, I wrote “What do you think was dried in there?” Several people left a comment with their guesses and I responded to their comments. That helped with the initial engagement of the video. As time went on, I kept getting more comments and I tried to keep up with them. However, my notifications were going off inside the TikTok app.
It started to feel overwhelming especially because I was posting other videos, and I was trying to check my notifications to see if any of those videos had comments on them.
Additionally, some of the comments seemed like they were for other people instead of for me which also led me to stop checking them.
I used to wonder why big content creators wouldn’t respond to all of their comments and the thing is, trying to respond to every comment can become another unpaid job. It’s not always worth the time and sometimes it might be better to leave the comment section alone after a while.
By the way, if you’re wondering what was dried in those dryers, the answer is blankets. I actually met the person who dried those blankets at a later time and they happened to be someone who had a wash and fold pickup and delivery service that decided to go to that laundromat to wash and dry those blankets for a client.
Although that video got two million views, I didn’t gain two million followers. And I’m glad.
Why? Because those people wouldn’t necessarily be my target audience since I wasn’t trying to build a brand around lint trap cleaning videos. I was trying to build a brand around me and what was going on in my life at that time.
Working at a laundromat and cleaning the dryer lint trays was a part of my story at that time which is why I shared those videos, but that wasn’t the major part of my story or brand.
Do you know how else I can tell that video didn’t help me reach my ideal audience? Because when I would post other types of videos, those videos wouldn’t get even a quarter of the views or engagement that I got for that viral video.
My most popular videos were my ASMR lint trap cleaning videos. This leads to my next point.
Many people will tell you that if a specific video goes viral, you should try to replicate that video to keep the momentum going. That could look like making another video with the same topic, format, or editing style.
In my case, that would mean making more ASMR lint trap cleaning videos.
Did I make more ASMR lint trap cleaning videos? Yes, I did because I genuinely enjoyed making those videos and I liked cleaning the lint trays in general. However, I didn’t want those videos to be my main type of videos on my account. Yet, that’s what my audience on TikTok enjoyed.
Some of my other ASMR lint trap cleaning videos got 14,000 views, 41,000 views, and 44,000 views. Another one got 543,000 views. Although that one was a shorter video, the fact that it got half a million views shows that’s the type of content people like to consume.
But that’s not the type of content I wanted to create forever.
Additionally, since I don’t work at a laundromat anymore, I can’t create those types of videos anymore. So the people who followed me for that type of content might unfollow me once I start posting content about other things.
While that can suck in the moment, there’s no point in having followers that aren’t your ideal audience, and going viral for a video you don’t want to be known for isn’t great because it can make you feel like you have to be boxed in with your content.
For a while, I felt that pressure to create that type of video to help build my following and that led me to stop posting on TikTok. At one point, I archived the ASMR lint trap cleaning videos as a way to “clean up my profile” and show that’s not the content my brand is about.
I ended up unarchiving those videos because I thought it was unfair to hide them from people who enjoyed watching and listening to those, and while I still don’t want to be known for them, it’s okay for them to be visible on my profile as a way to show those videos were once a part of my story but they’re no longer the focus of my account.
While watching the view count go from thousands of views to tens of thousands of views to hundreds of thousands of views to a million views can feel exciting, it can cause you to look at the views of your other videos and think those videos aren’t performing well.
First of all, going viral is not normal. Do many people have videos that went viral? Yes. Do many people have millions of views on several of their videos? Yes.
So what do I mean? It’s not normal to get a million views on every single video you post or every piece of content you publish. At least not organically (aka without ads).
Just because your other videos didn’t get a million views or half a million views or 100,000 views, that doesn’t mean those videos aren’t successful in some sense.
Maybe those other videos didn’t get a lot of views but those videos still helped to build your following, grow your email list, and get customers for your product or service.
Maybe those other videos didn’t get a lot of views but you’re proud of those videos because they demonstrate how your communication skills and editing skills have improved over time.
Maybe those other videos didn’t get a lot of views but they have helped you become known for the things you actually want to be known for (unlike that video that took off unexpectedly).
And who gets to decide what “a lot of views” is anyways?
If you started a brand new account and got 1,000 views on your videos, it’s fair to say that’s a lot of views.
If you’ve had an account for six months and you get 10,000 views on each video, it’s fair to say that’s a lot of views.
Most importantly though, views aren’t the only metric to pay attention to. The number of comments, likes, DMs, follows, unfollows, downloads for your lead magnet, signups for your workshop, etc. are all metrics to pay attention to when measuring the “success” of a video.
While there are content creators who have had a video reach one million views on multiple platforms, that wasn’t the case for me.
I took that same lint trap cleaning video and posted it on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. As mentioned before, the video got two million views on TikTok. However, it got 1,645 views on Instagram Reels and 655 views on YouTube Shorts.
I didn’t change the video and there was no watermark on it from another platform. I edited and exported the video from CapCut and uploaded it to three platforms, yet that same video performed differently on all three platforms.
That’s interesting since many people use multiple social media platforms, so it’s not like the audience on TikTok is completely different from the audience on Instagram or YouTube.
However, the algorithms may work differently and TikTok has been known for giving new creators a better chance of having their content pushed out to more people quickly since its algorithm at that time was programmed to show people similar videos they have interacted with before or might be interested in based on how they use the app.
On the other hand, Instagram and YouTube are more known for slower growth and many people have shared that a video they posted didn’t take off until months or years later.
Therefore, results can vary by platform and based on the video topic or format.
Takeaway 7: You can’t fully predict which video will take off.
I had no idea that video was going to go viral on TikTok especially since it was the second video I posted on that account. When it first got tens of thousands of views, I thought “Wow, that’s so cool! People seem to like this video.” When it got to 100,000 views and 200,000 views, I thought that was insane. So imagine my surprise when that video reached one million views in one month and two million views in the same year it was posted. I was flabbergasted.
Although I posted more ASMR lint trap cleaning videos, those videos didn’t reach one million views. One lint-related video reached half a million views but it was much shorter than my lint trap cleaning videos. Therefore, even though I replicated the original viral video, I wasn’t able to get the same results for similar videos.
I will say I wasn’t consistent with posting videos and I do wonder what would have happened if I posted a lint trap cleaning video everyday or several times per week for one year. Would multiple videos have reached one million views as a result? Would I have had hundreds of thousands of followers by the end of that year?
I don’t know and I’m okay with not knowing because as I said, that’s not what I want to be known for and that’s not the type of content I want to create forever.
If another one of my videos goes viral in the future, I at least hope it’s one of the videos I want to be known for long term.
I don’t have the secret formula for viral videos. Many videos go viral for different reasons. Sometimes those reasons are good (e.g. the video was funny, relatable, or intriguing in some way). Sometimes those reasons are bad (e.g. someone said or did something that is perceived as negative by most of society). Sometimes it’s because the video was posted at the right time (e.g. when a topic is trending). There are many factors that can contribute to a video going viral and someone can implement all those tips and strategies and not have their videos go viral.
Over to You – Going Viral on TikTok and Social Media
Those are my key takeaways from having a video reach two million views on TikTok. While going viral can seem glamorous on the outside, it can be overwhelming behind the scenes.
Now I want to hear from you. Have you ever had one of your videos go viral? If yes, how did that affect you and your content creation journey? If not, what’s one of your favorite viral videos? Why do you think that video went viral? Leave your answers in the comments below!
