I Had a TikTok Go Viral (44+ Million Views). Here's What It's Like
To make a long story short: not much.
Everyone wants to go viral these days, especially on TikTok. And it’s hard to know what will capture the public’s attention because top-performing videos are so random. But here’s my story of having a TikTok hit 44.5+ million views.
This past fall, my horse Ollie was put out to pasture in a new field. This field had clover, which is sometimes covered with a harmless toxin that can cause horses to salivate excessively. I have seen this on horses before, but in those instances, it was only little spit bubbles that formed around the mouth. In Ollie’s case, he turned into a Niagara Falls of spit - horse slobber everywhere. It was gross and interesting, so on September 4th of 2025, I took a video and posted it to TikTok. No overthinking, just pick and post.
From there, it slowly and steadily gained traction. It had gotten a few thousand likes in the first day or so, but I wasn’t checking all that regularly to monitor its progress. I remember when I realized it was actually going viral. My friend and I were walking around the Sunnybrook dog park, and I pulled it up to show him, and then realized it had, like, 2 million views or something at that point.
As of this writing, the video currently has 44.5 million views, 2.7 million likes, 8,851 comments, and 110.5k saves.
How much money did I make? $0. I live in Canada and cannot participate in the TikTok creator fund. Another Canadian content creator had a video go viral, and she did the math on how much it would have made; it came out to around $20,000. I think my sister and I did the math for my video, and mine would have made around the same, maybe a bit more.
Did anyone I know recognize my horse? No. But I did eventually post the video to my personal Instagram, and people reached out to say they had seen it on their FYP and didn’t realize it was my horse.
Did any cool opportunities come out of it? Not really. A bunch of pages DM’d me for the right to repost and share my video, including LADbible. They never offered money or even waited for a “yes”; they would just include a form to fill out, with a link to the video. The link didn't even work, and they never responded to my message telling them so, so I don’t think the video ever made it to their page.
The most annoying part was people telling me my horse was on the brink of certain death. For months. Even though it only lasted for like 2 or 3 days. Even though I and other people were in the comments telling people it’s normal and harmless. Even though I had consulted a vet and they had nothing to say about it beyond making sure Ollie had access to water. And even though time had passed and Ollie was still very much alive. That’s my least favorite part of being on the internet - the people thinking the least are commenting the most.
As for Ollie, he has stayed humble despite his 15 minutes of fame. I posted the same video to Reels, and I think it got 2+ million likes. More recently, I posted photos of him sitting next to me on Reddit, and they got 106,000+ upvotes. He’s a certified Internet darling and star. As he should be, he is such a sweet horse, and he loves attention.
So anyway, that’s the short and boring story of what it was like to have a TikTok go viral. Not very exciting.