Writing the three different blogs I have over the last 11 years or so I used them as a bit of an outlet really. They were never meant to be anything more than me getting things off my chest, an outlet for things that were bugging me, or documenting the stupid stuff that happens to us.
I never expected or desired to go particularly “viral”, especially at first. The first one I wrote about what a nightmare it was to get the train to London did actually get more popular than I thought it would and whilst I wouldn’t say it went viral, it was getting a lot of views, comments and I could have monetized it if we had stayed in England.
The second blog about our time in Houston also did fairly well. Recently I was speaking to another expat friend who read it when they lived in Singapore. We didn’t know them at the time I wrote it and it randomly came up in conversation a few weeks ago. That was a bit of a surprise to me and made me realize that with a bit more self promotion and more regular commitment to actually writing I could perhaps grow something.
The Shroders in Florida grew into a Youtube channel, right around the time the kids got into watching random people play Minecraft online and make millions of dollars. A wonderful time in my life when Freddie wasn’t in any way self-conscious, would film a load of the content for me and like everything I get into for 15 minutes I spent a load of money on a Macbook, GoPro, editing software and royalty free music. Again I wanted to use this as a way of documenting the stuff we do. Sort of like a family album that I can look back on when I’m even greyer and even older. I didn’t expect to make money or become famous, but I did look into what I needed in order to do so. At that time I needed 100 subscribers to be accepted into the monetization program. (It has changed significantly since)
100 measily subscribers. I have 6 Gmail addresses, so that was an easy 6, just 94 to go. Friends and family should get me close, then a few stragglers should have got me there. Editing videos is time consuming and I am shit at it. Our videos were too long, they were all about cruises, nobody gave a shit and right now I sit at 58 measily subscribers. Remember that number, it is important later.
I set up a Facebook creator page, a Twitter account and all sorts to try and promote it, but to be honest I don’t like over self promotion, the Facebook page has 209 followers. Again, remember that number.
I tell you all this for a reason. Not just to vent about how I can’t seem to get anywhere. I know the reason why. I don’t post regularly on either here or YouTube, our content is niche to say the least and the editing is awful. In fact I am not even allowed to make anymore videos. Kids being the horrible little shits they are, especially teenage kids, found the YouTube page and the upshot of that is Fred is not so keen on being involved at all anymore, so instead of uploading these videos I now have 45 hours of random footage saved on multiple hard drives around my house.
The reason I am venting about this is that it appears Laura through no effort whatsoever has achieved a level in social media fame that no amount of witty blogs or 35 minute videos of random cruise ships could ever achieve. She is now an accredited Facebook creator with over 700 followers and is on the verge of qualifying for monetization.
How did this happen? Well last year we went back to England, nobody really knew, especially Laura’s Mum and Dad, it was a suprise trip some 4 weeks after Laura’s Mum’s 70th birthday. We snuck round to their house and Laura asked me to film her knocking on the door and surprising them. There was zero discussion of what this would look like, what the plan was, just point and shoot.
We got there nice and quietly, Laura walked to the door, me filming the entire time. Her Dad was sitting outside and one child ran straight over to surprise him. Laura banging on the door at the same time. As the front door opened a noise so high pitched not even dogs could hear it screeched “HAPPPPYYY 70TH BIRTHDAY!!!”
That was the whole video. 35 seconds tops. Laura uploaded it to her facebook and we thought nothing more of it. There were a few nice comments and likes, but other than the children constantly mocking Laura’s high pitched screech over the last year we never thought about it again. I mean it wasn’t even her Birthday, that had been weeks previous.
That was until last night.
Sitting on the sofa, flicking through her phone Laura tells me about a notification she has received from Facebook. She get’s hundreds of Facebook notifications, we are borderline boomers. Instagram and TikTok mean nothing to us, Facebook is our Social Media of choice and Laura is balls deep in Facebook every minute of the day she isn’t on the phone to her friend Gail. We basically at this point live totally separate lives, 8 inches apart on the sofa. Some crappy Netflix show or documentary on, Laura scrolling through 30 second reels, occasionally asking me to summarize the entire motivations of the main protagnist in the 14th serial killer documentary we have watched in 15 seconds, before just telling me he was sexually driven despite not watching a minute of it.
This notification though warranted her stopping scrolling and telling me, so it had to be important.
It turns out Facebook has identified her and then certified her as a “Digital Creator” off the back of one completely unedited 35 second reel. That one reel that is so high pitched every time it gets played in this house bats circle us for an hour has led her to over 700 followers.
3 and a half times more followers than The Shroders in Florida Facebook page which I actually spent time and effort crafting.
Marriage should be about celebrating each others successes, If Laura is successful then I am successful and vice versa. Bollocks to that. I am seething about this.
I estimate that I have put in about 100 hours, writing, re-writing, filming, editing, uploading even some planning for the sake of 200 people occasionally looking and significantly less watching any of the YouTube videos. Laura doesn’t even film this video and all of a sudden the checks from Zuckerberg are about to come rolling in.
700 followers off the back of one video. I’ve watched this video 100 times now I can’t understand it at all.
Laura has embraced this new found fame as only she knows how. Diving deep into analytics that she has no clue what they mean. Sharing really God awful reels other people have done then checking the “Dashboard” to see what “Engagement” she has got. Literally two days ago she had no idea about any of this, now she is the next Mr Beast.
Jealousy is not a great trait, I am not jealous really but I am pissed off. I might be biased but I have put out some top tier content. I have been expecting calls from publishers for at least 6 years now and nothing but crickets and the occasional phone call from the “Best Supporting Actress” of Laura’s viral masterpiece her mum, telling me she almost literally pissed herself at my recounting of me getting stung in the right nut by a rogue bee or Laura flooding the back yard.
So I have made a decision, I think I am gonna put out some reels of me ranting in my car… I can’t put up with being married to an influencer with a bigger following than me, or I am going to hijack her profile and put a video out calling all her followers inbred assholes. Either way I will have more followers!!!
The Shroders in Florida 