By Jane Sonnenschein · July 31, 2026

On November 11, 2025, one of my TikTok videos suddenly took off, sending my account into an almost unbelievable period of growth. Soon afterward, a second video went viral as well. Together, the two videos brought more attention to the rest of my account, and even posts that had previously performed quite ordinarily began receiving several times their usual number of views.

In less than two weeks, I gained nearly six thousand followers.

During that period, almost every time I refreshed the analytics page, the numbers had risen again. One video had gained more views, another had received more likes, and the follower count seemed unable to stop climbing. Posts that had once disappeared almost unnoticed were suddenly receiving comments, shares, and new followers. It felt as though a huge wave had lifted the entire account into the air.

When something like that happens, it is difficult not to believe that your life may be about to change. Perhaps the account is finally taking off. Perhaps you have finally found the right direction. Perhaps all you need to do is keep going, and everything will begin to look different.

But the wave arrived quickly, and it disappeared just as quickly.

By then, I had become much better at developing storylines. The relationships between the characters were clearer, and the series itself was more complete. In terms of scripts, visuals, and production, I felt that the later videos were more mature than the ones that had gone viral. They were also much closer to the kind of work I actually wanted to make.

But the numbers did not improve.

Instead, each new video seemed to perform worse than the one before it. Many of them did not even reach a thousand views. Every day, I opened the analytics page and asked myself the same questions. What had gone wrong? Was it the subject, the visuals, the time of posting? Had the platform simply stopped recommending my work?

I knew that the videos were better than before. So why were the results getting worse?

I fell into a deep cycle of self-doubt.

Because of that sudden surge of attention, I had genuinely believed that I might be entering a new stage. I even bought a new computer, reorganized my production process, and made all kinds of preparations, as though I were getting ready for the next wave of traffic to arrive at any moment.

But the next wave never came.

The computer I had bought to prepare for this “new stage” eventually became the computer I sat in front of while refreshing the analytics page again and again, watching disappointing numbers and becoming more anxious each day. I tried sharing the same content on other platforms, but they were just as quiet. Everything I posted seemed to sink without leaving a ripple.

The worse the numbers became, the more desperately I searched for an explanation. And the more I searched, the more often I checked the analytics. The excitement of thinking, “Perhaps I am about to succeed,” slowly turned into the anxiety of wondering, “What am I doing wrong?”

Eventually, even the act of creating stopped bringing me joy.

Around January 2026, just before Chinese New Year, life became especially busy. I was attending a training course while also putting a great deal of energy into writing. To escape the feeling of being controlled every day by views and follower counts, I stopped posting on TikTok altogether. Then I stopped updating my other social media accounts as well.

That break lasted almost six months.

It was not until July, after I had created my independent website, that I began returning to those platforms one by one. Social media no longer felt like a place where I had to chase views for their own sake. It had become a way to introduce people to my website and guide them toward my longer work.

That new purpose made it possible for me to begin again.

Since restarting, most of my TikTok videos have still received only a few hundred views. The better-performing ones reach eight or nine hundred, which is roughly where the account was before it went viral. Each video usually brings in a few new followers, sometimes ten or more. At the same time, because the account already has a relatively large follower base, people also unfollow every day.

In the past, this would have been exactly what I hoped for.

Every time I posted, a few people chose to stay. Gaining five or ten followers a day could slowly add up to several hundred in a month. The account had not stopped growing. It was simply growing without the same intensity.

Meanwhile, something unexpected happened on Instagram, a platform where I had previously struggled to gain any traction. Before the break, I had posted many times without seeing much movement in my follower count. But after returning from a six-month pause, I gained three or four hundred followers in about ten days.

It did not lift me into the air the way TikTok once had. Instead, it gave me a sense of slow, steady movement—something quieter and more sustainable.

My feelings about all of this were complicated.

I would not say I was excited, but I could not exactly call myself disappointed either. The accounts were clearly growing. I seemed to be caught somewhere between the two feelings. Rationally, I knew that the situation was already much better than the days when almost no one noticed my work. Yet whenever I remembered gaining six thousand followers in less than two weeks, the progress in front of me suddenly seemed insignificant.

I was still moving forward, but I could no longer feel simply happy about growth itself.

Eventually, I realised that perhaps the account was not what had changed. That sudden viral surge had changed the standard inside my mind.

What We Struggle to Forget Is Often Not the Low Point, but the Peak

Someone who has never experienced rapid growth might see an account gaining ten or more followers a day and consider it an ideal situation. The account is not relying on a single lucky post. Each new piece of content brings in a small number of real viewers, and over time those people gradually add up.

But once you have seen hundreds of followers arrive in a single day, gaining ten no longer feels like growth. It feels like a loss.

It is like standing on level ground and suddenly being lifted high into the air by a wave. When the wave retreats, you have not necessarily sunk below where you started. You may still be standing higher than before. But because you have seen that extraordinary height, ordinary ground begins to feel like failure.

People adapt quickly to what they receive. A number that once seemed impossible can soon become part of what the mind considers normal. At first, gaining two followers in a day makes you happy. Later, twenty feels ordinary. Once you have experienced several hundred in a day, twenty may even feel disappointing.

Satisfaction does not rise permanently along with the numbers. Instead, each new peak can quietly raise the minimum standard in our minds.

Sometimes the real danger is not that the results are too poor. It is that the results were once so good that we can no longer recognise ordinary progress for what it is.

Platforms Teach Us to Mistake the Exceptional for the Ordinary

This change in perspective does not come only from our own experiences. It is also shaped by what platforms show us every day.

We open the home feed and see posts with tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of likes. We visit certain profiles and find that the creator has not posted very much, yet almost every post seems to be a hit. Sometimes the content does not even look especially complicated. It may be a single image, a simple animation, or a few ordinary sentences.

The question naturally arises: I could make this too. I might even make it better. So why can they succeed when I cannot?

But the content recommended to us is never an accurate picture of everyday life in the industry. It is a tiny collection of extreme peaks, selected from an enormous amount of ordinary content.

We do not see how many people posted something similar on the same day and received only a handful of views. We do not see how many accounts were abandoned after several months. Nor do we know whether those profiles that appear to contain nothing but successful posts have deleted the poorly performing ones, reposted older material, or already gone through several failed accounts before reaching this point.

Platforms keep placing a small number of exceptional success stories in front of everyone. Over time, exceptional results begin to look normal, while steady growth starts to seem inadequate.

We may already be moving forward, but because we are not suddenly taking off like the people we see online, we begin to believe that we are not moving at all.

A Viral Surge Changes More Than Numbers. It Changes Expectations

When a sudden wave of attention arrives, the most exciting part is not simply watching the numbers rise. It is the feeling that life itself may be about to change.

You begin to imagine that perhaps the account really will become successful. Perhaps you will be able to earn money from it. Perhaps you will no longer need to do work you dislike. Perhaps all the effort that once went unnoticed is finally about to be rewarded.

So when the traffic falls, you lose more than views. You also lose an entire imagined future.

From the outside, someone may say, “Your videos still bring in ten new followers each. That is already good.” But to the creator, it can feel as though an exit that had almost opened has suddenly closed again.

This may also explain why some creators stop posting even after gaining tens or hundreds of thousands of followers.

From the outside, people wonder why they do not simply continue. But the creator’s inner reference point may no longer be, “I have tens of thousands of followers.” It may be, “My videos once received hundreds of thousands of views, and now they only receive a few thousand.”

A person may be able to endure being unnoticed, yet struggle deeply with falling from a height. When no one has noticed you yet, you can tell yourself that you simply have not begun. But after success has appeared and then faded, it is easy to feel: I once had it, and now I have lost it.

Being Able to Handle Attention Matters More Than Simply Receiving It

In an essay that stayed with me, the writer asked a question: If an enormous wave of attention suddenly arrived, would I actually be able to handle it?

That is a far more mature question than asking, “When will I finally go viral?”

Handling attention does not simply mean being happy when the follower count rises. It means having enough ideas and material to continue creating after the attention arrives. It means having a stable working rhythm, being able to deal with comments, expectations, and criticism, and still continuing when the next post performs badly.

A viral post may result from many accidental factors coming together at the right moment. Long-term creation requires a different set of abilities.

A creator needs real experiences, observations, and thoughts—something inside them that can keep producing new material. They also need a workable routine, so that they do not wake up every morning feeling anxious about what they should post that day.

More importantly, they need to learn not to turn every piece of platform feedback into a judgment of their personal worth.

A video going viral does not mean that you have finally succeeded. A video disappearing without attention does not mean that the entire direction is wrong. Otherwise, you may appear to be creating content, while internally you are taking your whole life to the analytics page for judgment every day.

Steady Growth Is Still Growth

What I now need to relearn is how to place those extraordinary ten days in their proper position.

They proved that my work could reach a large audience. They also allowed me to experience the excitement of attention arriving very quickly. But they were never meant to become the minimum standard that every future day had to meet. Nor should they be used to measure every ordinary period that followed.

That was a sudden change in the weather. It was not the climate my account had to maintain forever.

When each video brings in five, ten, or more new followers, it means that people are still stopping among countless other posts, watching my work, and deciding to stay. Even when others leave at the same time, the account is not failing as long as it continues moving forward overall.

Ten followers a day can become around three hundred in a month. Five a day can still add up to a meaningful number of real readers over a year. This kind of growth is not dramatic, but it may be far closer to what an ordinary creator can actually sustain.

A sudden breakthrough is exciting. Steady progress requires patience. It is less dramatic, but it is also more likely to leave a creator with their health, their daily life, and their desire to keep expressing themselves intact.

Long-Term Thinking Means Learning to Accept Ordinary Days Again

We often think that long-term thinking simply means telling ourselves to keep going. But the hardest part is not understanding that idea. It is learning to accept the ordinary days without surprises, applause, or obvious turning points.

It means accepting that only a few people followed today. It means accepting that a particular post did not perform as well as expected. It means accepting that the account will not make you feel every day as though your life is about to change.

And then, on those quiet and almost uneventful days, you still follow the routine you have built and complete the work in front of you.

Long-term consistency does not mean exhausting yourself every day. Nor does it mean forcing yourself to produce the next viral hit. It means keeping the daily workload at a level that still allows you to return tomorrow.

I may no longer have the powerful momentum I experienced last year, but I now have a clearer working process and a tree of ideas that continues to produce new material. Compared with a sudden wave that lifts someone into the air, these things are much closer to a path that can truly continue.

That surge of attention last year should not become the ruler I use to diminish what I am doing today.

Perhaps the real success of an account is not how high it once climbed on a particular day, but whether, many years later, the creator is still there, the work is still there, and the tree is still growing.

This essay is also available in other languages:

Chinese version: 经历过泼天流量以后，稳定增长为什么反而像失败

German version: Warum sich stetiges Wachstum nach einem viralen Höhenflug plötzlich wie Scheitern anfühlt