Pod Insights The Sporkful Can We Go Viral On TikTok? (Reheat) About this episode TikTok is the wild west of the food media world. It’s less professionalized than Instagram and YouTube, and it holds the promise of virality from the very first time you post. So we wondered: What actually makes a food TikTok go viral?
Transcript 8,242 words · 14 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Dan Pashman? There's nothing quite like Aruba. The white sand beaches are truly unlike anything you've seen. But what really stands out is the food. Because Aruba is not like other Caribbean islands. French pastries, Spanish paella, Peruvian barbecue, papardelle that has no business being that good that far from Florence. Not to mention the local fair. Aruba's food scene pulls you in with its astonishing variety of cuisines and beyond satisfies you with its unexpected flavors. So plan your escape to culinary delight at aruba.com. Your taste buds will thank you. Start the day strong with Quaker protein products. Quaker makes it easy and delicious to get a good source of protein. No matter what the day has in store, Quaker protein products give you a variety of ways to reach your protein goals.
0:45 Dan Pashman? Oatmeal, granola, bars, and rice snacks in flavors you already love, like maple and brown sugar and blueberries and cream. Quaker protein helps fuel you to start whatever's next. Get your protein with Quaker, available at a store near you.
1:02 Speaker 01 Sirius XM Podcasts.
1:10 Dan Pashman? Hey, everyone. Dan here with another Sporkful reheat for you. And this one involves something called TikTok. Have you heard of this? I think the kids are into it. So listen, we did this episode a while back where I tried to make my first ever TikTok video go viral. I did market research. I spoke to experts. I enlisted my wife as a cinematographer. I definitely thought way too hard about it. But let me tell you, this is an episode that so many people have talked to me since it came out. It's really a fan favorite. And if you missed it the first time around or wanted to hear it again, this is your chance. And hey, I'm still posting on TikTok. Find me there at the Sporkful. One more quick note. Joanne Lee Molinaro, who you're going to hear from in this episode, just came out with a new cookbook. And I love everything that Joanne does. She's phenomenal, so you should definitely get it.
1:55 Dan Pashman? It's called The Korean Vegan Homemade: Recipes and Stories from My Kitchen. Remember, there's an episode you want us to pull out of the deep freezer for a reheat. Drop us a line at [email protected] . Thanks and enjoy.
2:09 Speaker 02 I think TikTok is sort of the place that all the new food trends are happening. It's where anyone who wants to be an internet food personality is starting out. It's like the place where it feels like you have the biggest shot of being noticed in the food space online, especially when platforms like YouTube and Instagram feel so professionalized and sort of so saturated with people who have been doing this for a long time. TikTok still feels like there's like opportunity there.
2:33 Dan Pashman? And I think we can agree that if you want to start off in the world of like food and food media, the last thing you'd want to do is start a podcast.
2:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, probably.
2:49 Dan Pashman? This is the Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. It's that time of year, you guys, I want to hear your New Year's food resolutions. Record a voice memo on your cellphone, tell me your name, tell me where you're from. That's important. And then answer this question. What food do you resolve to eat more of in the new year and why? Send me that voice memo at [email protected] and you can hear yourself in our big year end episode. Okay, let's get into it. If you love food, which I'm guessing you do, then you probably spend some time every day looking at food on social media, right? Watching videos, liking, sharing. Occasionally, you may even be so moved by something you see that you actually cook
3:33 Dan Pashman? it. And I've often wondered, why do certain recipe videos and food hacks go viral and so many others don't? There are people whose whole job is to try to answer this question, to create viral content. And most of the time, they fail. It's really hard, which kind of makes me want to see if I could do it. Could I break down the most popular food videos into their component parts and reverse engineer something viral? And if I could, what would it tell us about the way we connect with food? About what appeals to us and what doesn't? Today, I'll attempt to answer those questions by trying to create my own viral food video. And not just any food video, I'm going to make a TikTok.
4:18 Dan Pashman? Why TikTok? Because, as you heard at the start of the show, that's where all the new food trends are happening. It's the Wild West of the food world, where everyone has a shot at going viral. Now, I know almost nothing about it, but I don't want to fall behind. I don't want to be out of touch. I know if I'm going to do this, I need a guide. That person you heard at the start of the show is Bettina Macalintal. She's an associate editor at Bon Appetit, and before that, she was a writer at Vice. She has her finger on the pulse of food culture. She's written about food in the suburbs, the finer points of Filipino food, and also food TikTok. I have had a TikTok account for a while, but I rarely look at it, and I've never posted. As I tell Bettina, to me, when I first open it up, it feels like, if you're in the right mood,
5:02 Dan Pashman? it feels like you just walked into a party. At other times, I sort of feel like I'm under attack. You know, like, it's just so much being hurled in my face. I'm like, whoa, take it easy here. Like, I'm just trying to get through the day, you know?
5:13 Speaker 02 Yeah, totally. But like, when you've watched enough TikTok that it sort of knows what you like, it does feel like that's sort of like walking into a party thing, right? Where it's all this familiar stuff that you, you see it, and you're like, yeah, this is exactly what I want. And it just showed up just for me.
5:27 Dan Pashman? So maybe you'll open TikTok, and it'll show you a video of someone making nachos, then a dog jumping into a kiddie pool, then someone vacuuming their very dirty slippers, if you're into that sort of thing. Bettina started posting on TikTok back in February. She got hooked pretty quickly.
5:41 Speaker 02 I had, like, no followers on TikTok when I started. And I posted my first video. And like, as of, as we speak, it's at 54,000 views, which like, I would say is pretty decent for someone who's doing it as a hobby. So like, I think TikTok does kind of incentivize people, like, your first video.
5:58 Dan Pashman? It's kind of like gambling. Like, it seems like TikTok wants a certain number of people to get, like, a deluge of positive feedback on one of their very early videos, because you kind of get hooked on that adrenaline rush.
6:09 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly.
6:14 Dan Pashman? Bettina says the video she posted after that first one didn't do as well. Like with most apps, the TikTok algorithm is secret. So this idea that it gets you lots of views on your first video to get you hooked, it's just a theory. It is a popular one with people trying to hack the algorithm, but it's also been questioned by others. So since I've never posted on TikTok, I might have a better chance of going viral in my first ever post there. Now, I should add, I am setting an important ground rule for myself here. I am not going to use my non-TikTok platforms to make this video go viral. You know, I got about 40,000 followers on Instagram and an even bigger audience that listens to this show. So sure, if I shared it through all my channels, I could probably get it a bunch of likes. But I want this to be a real experiment. I want to test my ability to reverse engineer virality.
6:59 Dan Pashman? So I'm not using my platform to boost it. Well, now I am, I guess. But spoiler alert, I already ran my experiment. I already made the video and posted it with no fanfare. So the results I'll present to you at the end of this show will be legit. But I'm getting way ahead of myself. I still have to figure out what works well on TikTok and what doesn't. I need to deconstruct other viral videos so I can construct my own. I asked Bettina to break down the different categories of hit food videos there.
7:27 Speaker 02 People just want to see food. I think that they either feel like they can actually replicate or something that they could never replicate, you know? Like, I feel like it's sort of at the extremes where it's something I can do, which is the TikTok feta pasta. Or it's like this potato that takes 15 hours and I'm not gonna actually do that, but I like to watch it.
7:45 Dan Pashman? Of course, you remember the TikTok feta pasta. You get a roasting pan, put in some cherry tomatoes, olive oil, salt and pepper, and then a whole block of feta. You put it in the oven. And when the tomatoes are roasted and the feta's all melty, you add cooked pasta and mix it all up. Finnish food blogger Yanni Howrenen posted this on her blog in 2019, and it was popular in Finland, but not beyond. Then in January, people started posting videos of themselves making it on TikTok, and the recipe went viral worldwide. The hashtag feta pasta has more than a billion views on TikTok. For a few weeks, there was a feta shortage at grocery stores across America. So I definitely heard of that one. But what's this garlic 15-hour potato? Bettina and I each bring it up on our phones, and she walks me through it.
8:28 Speaker 02 So like, right off the bat, you've got this like sense of something is a process and you've got this little like crispy nugget here that looks really like appealing, right? So as soon as you click on it, you get this nice crunch.
8:41 Speaker 03 Just look at that golden deliciousness. So you start by raising off that garlic in the oven for about half an hour and then you're going to press it into a gooey delicious paste.
8:50 Dan Pashman? It's very oozy. The garlic is oozing out.
8:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, you get the garlic that's kind of like a sight to behold to see it like all squeezing out of the the head. Then we've got this like quick process where the the steps are pretty easy.
9:03 Speaker 03 Physically possible, lavish in a load of smoked salt, smothering goose fat.
9:08 Dan Pashman? Goose fat. Just get goose fat, potatoes, she's the roasted garlic.
9:13 Speaker 03 The oven for three hours.
9:15 Dan Pashman? Three hours.
9:16 Speaker 03 Weigh them down and refrigerate for 12 hours, then slice it up any shape you fancy, deep fry it, and then the best bit is there a more beautiful potato.
9:26 Dan Pashman? Wow, that does look really good.
9:28 Speaker 02 Right? It's like this thing that you know you're probably not going to make at home because you don't want to do a 15 hour potato, right? But like, it's nice to look at and there's a process and it sounds good.
9:37 Dan Pashman? Show me something in the world of food hacks, not so much as pure entertainment, something people might actually do.
9:43 Speaker 02 Okay, so the salmon rice is this like leftovers video where this one sort of TikTok food influencer just she makes leftover salmon. She puts it on top of rice. She microwaves it with an ice cube on top. Um, and then she like mashes it up and eats it with a piece of seaweed. And so the hack is just her putting the ice cube onto the rice to help it steam when she microwaves it. So the ice doesn't melt when it comes out of the microwave. Um, so I think people are fascinated, one by the hack and two by the fact that it's like this confusing thing.
10:15 Dan Pashman? But like when I reheat leftover rice, I just sprinkle a little bit of hot water from the tap over the rice.
10:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's what I do.
10:20 Dan Pashman? Yeah, and microwave it and that like re-steams it. Isn't that better than ice?
10:25 Speaker 02 I mean, I think this is contentious. I think that like I've seen stuff that says like the ice is really helpful and other people say like it's not actually that useful. So I think maybe it's just like the way that this creator Emily Marco like did it. Um, and then it blew up. But yeah, if I were doing it, I would just do the water, but that doesn't look as good on a video probably.
10:46 Dan Pashman? So basically, there are two types of food videos: pure entertainment and practical. And really, this division isn't new. If you look at cookbooks from hundreds of years ago, there are ones with everyday recipes and tips, and ones that tell you how to fill a pie crust with live birds. So when you slice open the pie, the birds all fly out to the delight of all the guests at your castle. For my video, I think I want to stick with something practical, to put one of my many food opinions to good use. I think I'll show one of my favorite tips for making something more delicious. It seems to me that when these kinds of videos work, they're a little silly, a little out there, but it's a food hack people might actually do. It has to use basic ingredients in a surprising way. It has to elicit delight. Now that I know what kind of video I'm gonna make, I need to think a little more about the nuts and bolts of it.
11:31 Dan Pashman? I don't really know anything about TikTok. I'm more of an Instagram guy. But I have a sense that what works on Instagram may not work on TikTok. So I turned to Emily Cantwell, an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Tulsa. She focuses on the cultural forces that impact how we look at food. Right now, she's co-editing a book called Food Instagram: Identity, Influence, and Negotiation. And she agrees: Instagram and TikTok are very different.
11:56 Speaker 04 So on Instagram, that was this world of beautiful images. Everything is sort of artfully curated. And then maybe there are these strategic crumbs, this strategic messiness. But it's life far more beautiful, right? Than our sort of actual lives.
12:10 Dan Pashman? Right. What's the word? Spretatura, a studied carelessness?
12:14 Speaker 04 Yes, exactly. Food Instagram was one of these spaces that really perfected that kind of an aesthetic style. And so I think TikTok was a part of maybe pushing back against some of that expected perfection of Instagram, that it's much more real and purposefully amateur.
12:31 Dan Pashman? So it seems I should abandon any pretense of professionalism and just go for the janky vibe that TikTok favors. Hopefully, that means I can skip using my ring light. Professor Cantoi has also written about gender and food. So I ask how her research on that front might apply here. Is there also a difference in what type of food a person might be making? Where like, like if you're gonna grill a big hunk of meat, you know, like, and you wanna go viral doing that, you might need to be a big burly guy. But if you're gonna make like a pastry with pink flowers on it, people expect a woman, you know? I'm not saying that's right. I'm saying those are the society's expectations.
13:05 Speaker 04 I think your chances of going viral are to either stick to the conventions, right, of like what's expected, or to like totally blow them out of the water. So sometimes that big difference, right, of seeing a big guy who bakes these perfect little things at home, serves them to his daughters, right? Like, you could see a context like that going viral because of the way it's pushing back against those conventions in a way that could seem funny to some people or could feel progressive to others.
13:29 Dan Pashman? I like where this is going. What about like a, like a three second break in the middle of the food video, where it's just like a TikTok dance break and it's me and my daughters dancing poorly?
13:38 Speaker 04 It depends how comfortable are you to exploit the cuteness of your children to attempt to go viral?
13:43 Dan Pashman? The boat has sailed, Professor. I mean, if you can't monetize your kids, why are you even having them in today's day and age?
13:53 Dan Pashman? So maybe there should be one break in the middle of like three seconds where I just go like TikTok dance and me and my daughters are dancing badly. And then another one could just be like, cute dog. And it's like one second of my dog just turning her head when I say cute dog.
14:06 Speaker 04 But again, the more production value it has, it can go both ways on TikTok. It values the amateur. It's, it's different than these other media spaces where production value gets you points.
14:17 Dan Pashman? Okay, I get it. Keep it lo-fi, don't try too hard. As we wrap up, Professor Cantoi has a warning for me.
14:24 Speaker 04 I think what's really interesting in trying to crack, right? This question of what goes viral, what really captures people's attention, that there isn't as clear of a formula to that as we would like, right? If we'd really figured it out, everything that attempted to go viral would. There's still this wonderful degree of unexpectedness and inexplicability for why some things draw us in.
14:49 Dan Pashman? I take the professor's point, but I still wanna try to crack the code. I do think I have a good idea for a video, but can I make it go viral? Coming up, before I try to be a TikTok star, I get advice from a TikTok star. Stick around.
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16:40 Dan Pashman? satisfies you with its unexpected flavors. So plan your escape to culinary delight at aruba.com. Your taste buds will thank you. Start the day strong with Quaker Protein Products. Quaker makes it easy and delicious to get a good source of protein. No matter what the day has in store, Quaker Protein Products give you a variety of ways to reach your protein goals. Oatmeal, granola, bars, and rice snacks in flavors you already love, like maple and brown sugar, and blueberries and cream. Quaker Protein helps fuel you to start whatever's next. Get your protein with Quaker, available at a store near you.
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18:26 Dan Pashman? Welcome back to another Sporkful reheat. I'm Dan Fashman. It's that time of year, friends. I want to hear your New Year's food resolutions for 2026. Send me a voice memo with your first name, location, and tell me what food you resolved to eat more of in the new year, and why. Send that voice memo to [email protected] , and you just might hear it in our year-end show, when I will also be revealing my New Year's food resolution for next year.
18:55 Dan Pashman? All right, let's get back to it. Now I understand TikTok a little better from a critical standpoint. The next phase of my research is to talk to a certified food TikTok star.
19:05 Speaker 06 I'm Joanne Molinaro, also known as the Korean Vegan.
19:08 Dan Pashman? And also, up until very recently, an attorney. Is that right?
19:12 Speaker 06 Yeah, well, I'm still an attorney. I was, up until recently, a partner at a large law firm. Now I'm just an attorney at said law firm.
19:21 Dan Pashman? So you sort of like took a little less responsibility?
19:24 Speaker 06 I took a lot less responsibility.
19:28 Dan Pashman? In 2016, Joanne created a food blog, The Korean Vegan, where she'd make vegan recipes based on the traditional Korean meals she ate growing up. She also posted recipes as The Korean Vegan on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. She had a loyal following, but it was a hobby or a side hustle. Then last year, she got on TikTok.
19:45 Speaker 06 I started TikTok mostly just to watch other people do things. Like, I wanted to laugh. And, you know, because TikTok knew that I was a food blogger, because that's what TikTok is so good at. It like knows you better than you know yourself in some ways. You know, it was throwing food content in my direction. And inevitably, I was inspired. But I was also lazy. And I was like, I don't want to like make anything pretty. I'm gonna throw my phone up against this wall, see what happens, and, you know, post it. I thought like, nobody would see it.
20:15 Dan Pashman? Joanne shot a video of her making her Korean braised potatoes. She cuts up potatoes, Korean green chilies, red onion, and braises them in a pan with soy sauce, maple syrup, and sesame oil.
20:25 Speaker 06 I didn't add anything really unique to it, other than, this is my kitchen, and you can hear my husband yelling at his piano student in the background. That was really the only thing that made it different from everybody else's food TikTok.
20:35 Dan Pashman? Joanne says she spent maybe five minutes cutting the video down. And then, she posted it. It was the second TikTok she had ever shared.
20:43 Speaker 06 All of a sudden, my watch, which is connected to my phone, starts blowing up. I'm like, whoa, what is happening? You know, and I start getting all these notifications. Comment this, mention that, da-da-da-da. And I was like, well, what's, what is this? And I, you know, start seeing the views just racking up. I think within like 24 hours, it had like a million views, close to a million views. And it was a complete rush. I had never experienced anything like that in my life.
21:12 Dan Pashman? Today, that video has nearly 2 million views. But Joanne's path to leaving her role in the law firm wasn't a straight line from there. The next video she dropped has 82,000 views. Great for an average person, but a far cry from her viral hit. I was curious to talk more with her about the ups and downs of a career in social media. I, you know, did this pasta project launch.
21:33 Speaker 06 I saw.
21:34 Dan Pashman? Okay, so, you know, like I had like a limit on my Instagram, time limit every day. And when we headed into that launch, I was like, I'm turning off the limits because I just have to be on social media a lot and sharing and all that. And when the craziness started to die down, it was hard for me to get back down to the usage level that I was at before. I, it was like, you know, like Instagram had given me like the uncut shit, you know?
21:59 Dan Pashman? It was so intense.
22:00 Speaker 06 Yes.
22:01 Dan Pashman? And how do I, I don't know how I get used to what's normal now. And I wonder if you, if you worry about that at all, about sort of getting hooked on the likes?
22:10 Speaker 06 Of course I do. And I mean, imagine if you will, you came out with a second pasta, you know? And you put it out into the world with the same care and the same sort of hope and, and all of that. And it totally tanks and nobody likes it. Then all of a sudden you're like, well, I just suck. I'm a failure. So, you know, I think about, oh, about four or five months in, right after I'd hit a million followers on TikTok, I experienced a little slump in my views. And yeah, I had to go see a therapist about it before I finally was able to be like, okay, I need to detach myself, like my worth is not tied to these metrics.
22:48 Dan Pashman? How, how did you get past that and, and back into doing it in a way that was positive?
22:54 Speaker 06 Well, I think that what my therapist really helped me to realize is you have no why for your TikTok. What is the purpose of your TikTok? What's the purpose of the Korean vegan? Like, why, why are you doing all of this? And I had to sit back and really craft, I actually literally wrote down like a mission statement for the Korean vegan.
23:14 Dan Pashman? Joanne decided her mission was to connect with people struggling with issues like mental health, disordered eating and family relationships. She started incorporating her personal life into her videos. Nowadays, she shows a video of her making a dish and shares part of her own story as she cooks, like her video where she's making potato doughnuts.
23:31 Speaker 06 Undoubtedly, the single hardest day of my life was the day that I left the home that I had lived in with my ex-husband for many years. My entire family came to help me pack up and leave my mom, my dad, my brother.
23:43 Dan Pashman? Joanne makes it feel like you're in the kitchen with her, like she's cooking just for you. It's very compelling, but it's probably not the style I want for my video. I want to stick with something a little more fun and practical instead of super personal. I asked Joanne for general advice, tips I can use if I want to go viral like her.
23:59 Speaker 06 I think the first thing is a good hook. You need something that's going to grab at people, right? And so those first one to three seconds, that's your elevator pitch. Why should you not swipe up? You use your voice, you use your image, you use the video, you use the sound, whatever it is that you have at your disposal to make sure that one to three second pitch is as powerful and effective as possible. So how do you prevent that finger from swiping up?
24:27 Dan Pashman? I've been making shows for a long time. I understand the importance of a good hook. But one to three seconds? It takes me one second to breathe in, to put oxygen in my lungs so that I can speak. Next, Joanne shares a tip about how to use TikTok's loop feature. You know, when you get to the end of a video, it seamlessly starts playing again from the beginning. She says a lot of TikTokers use that to their advantage.
24:47 Speaker 06 The more you can make it ambiguous where a video begins and where it ends, the likelier that people accidentally watch it more than once. And those accidental more than once watches tell the algorithm, oh, lots of people are watching this video more than once, you know? So that's another, you know, kind of little trick.
25:06 Dan Pashman? Oh, interesting.
25:06 Speaker 06 Yeah, to creating a TikTok video that could go viral.
25:09 Dan Pashman? So ideally, you kind of want to begin and end on the same image.
25:12 Speaker 06 Exactly, yeah. So some of the best, like my friend Dylan, DJ Lemay, he's the ice cream god on TikTok. He is legendary for his loops. Like, you can't tell where it begins and ends. He finishes his videos in half sentences.
25:27 Dan Pashman? Yeah, if you listen, it's hard to tell where the video ends and starts again.
25:31 Speaker 07 I've never made a waffle cone like this before. Normally, I'm burning my fingers off and rolling them up in my hands. You've also never seen me use waffle dough, but you've only seen me use waffle batter. I'm surprised they turned out really good. I know I've made hundreds of thousands of waffles in my lifetime, but I've never made a waffle cone like this before. Normally, I'm burning my fingers off.
25:48 Speaker 06 And so you end up watching his 17-second video like 30 times by accident.
25:53 Dan Pashman? That's so interesting. Joanne and I keep talking, and I float the idea of the dance break with my kids. She thinks I should skip it. Could come across like I'm trying too hard, which I'm learning is basically the worst thing you can do on TikTok. People there want authenticity, or at least a credible performance of it. Seems like TikTok stars put a lot of effort into making it look like they don't put a lot of effort into it. Maybe they aren't as different from Instagrammers as they like to think. Anyway, clearly, I need to be authentic. But there's a problem. My authentic self is old, at least by TikTok standards. I worry I won't fit in with this crowd. Then again, Joanne's in her 40s, too.
26:30 Speaker 06 Just because you're older doesn't mean that young people can't appreciate what it is that you have to offer or that people can't find value in it. I kind of figured that out pretty quickly. Because there are a lot of young people, why not embrace my age? And so I created this sort of auntie persona. And a lot of these auntie videos where I'm giving advice to, in my head, my nephew, when he's 13, 14, 16, 20 years old. These are the things that I would tell him. And that's the demographic that these auntie videos have really been hitting.
27:02 Dan Pashman? You're not trying to come on TikTok and being like, what's up, young people? I'm just like you.
27:08 Speaker 06 No. I could try that and it probably would go viral, but for the wrong reasons.
27:13 Dan Pashman? Right, right, right.
27:18 Dan Pashman? As I've learned more about TikTok and what I think my approach should be, I've been moving closer to an idea for my video. Finally, after getting all of Joanne's advice, I think I know what I want to do. So the concept that I'm working with Joanne is that I have a kind of novel way to eat a slice of pie.
27:35 Speaker 06 Oh, I like where this is going.
27:37 Dan Pashman? So what I like to do, take a slice of pie, let's say a pecan pie, big scoop of vanilla ice cream, chop them all up with a spoon and stir them together so that the ice cream is like 50% melted. And the pie is cut up into chunks. And each piece of pie is coated in ice cream.
27:58 Speaker 06 Evenly coated.
27:59 Dan Pashman? Yes, but, but you want different sized chunks of pie. You want different, like you don't want every bite to be the same. And you still want some ice cream.
28:06 Dan Pashman? Then you throw on there. A shot of bourbon.
28:11 Speaker 06 Oh.
28:12 Dan Pashman? Didn't see that coming, did you?
28:14 Speaker 06 No.
28:14 Dan Pashman? Mix it up a little more and then sprinkle on top some flaky salt.
28:19 Speaker 06 That sounds amazing.
28:20 Dan Pashman? And it's just like you get, you get crunchy and a little salty and the liquor and the creaminess of the ice cream. It's just like, it's so, so good. But I, I grant you that it's a little bit weird.
28:31 Speaker 06 I don't think it's, I mean, I think it's weird, but in, in like the good way, I could see that going viral, like just like nature cereal or any of these other weird.
28:39 Dan Pashman? Nature cereal, what was that one?
28:41 Speaker 06 Oh my gosh. So the nature cereal was literally like, just take like frozen fruit, like frozen raspberries and strawberries and blackberries and blueberries, put them in a bowl and then just add coconut water to it. It took TikTok by storm and that's what you want. And so like people could take your sort of idea and then do it with apple pie, do it with cherry pie, you know, and like create sort of duets with you, stitches with you. And that's how you create a food TikTok trend. I could easily see you doing that. But I think the important thing again is like, it needs to be from you.
29:15 Dan Pashman? What exactly is the problem that my food hack is solving?
29:19 Speaker 06 For me, when I eat pie, like I'm always like fussing with it because I don't get the right proportion of ice cream to pie.
29:28 Dan Pashman? That's right, right. The ratios. It's very hard to manage the ratios.
29:32 Speaker 06 And that's like, it sounds like a silly problem.
29:34 Dan Pashman? No.
29:35 Speaker 06 And that's okay.
29:35 Dan Pashman? This is a safe space, Joanne. That is not a silly problem.
29:38 Speaker 06 See, this is what I'm talking about. See, like this whole thing is what is like a TikTok video. Like this is a safe space. Like, like it literally like that's, that's what they love. I mean, that's what will be funny and what will reach people. The idea that you have is great, but I would caution you, don't overthink it. If you overthink it, they'll know you overthought it. That's the thing.
29:57 Dan Pashman? I think it might be a little late for that. I mean, we've already devoted a whole podcast episode to the process of thinking about it. Still, when it comes time to shoot my TikTok, I try to keep Joanne's parting advice in mind. Now I'm going in.
30:14 Dan Pashman? Equipped with an iPhone and a phony birth certificate that says I was born in 1998, your intrepid reporter prepares to shoot his first ever TikTok. Or is it just a talk? A tic? That doesn't sound right. I head to my kitchen. Before I start shooting, I feel like I should test my recipe. I haven't actually done this thing with the bourbon and the pie for a while. Okay. I have a slice of pie and a scoop of ice cream in a bowl. Bottle of bourbon. Right here. I have a shot glass. Maybe we should just start with, try half a shot and see how that goes. I'm gonna mix up the ice cream. First just mix it up. Ice cream and pie, mixing together, chopping it.
30:58 Dan Pashman? I'm gonna pour in this half a shot of bourbon on top of my mixed up pie and ice cream. That looks like a lot of bourbon. But let me try a bite. Mmm, uh-oh, uh-oh, oh, oh, mmm. That was too much bourbon. Yeah. A teaspoon of bourbon, that's what we need here. A teaspoon is much better. I'm ready to record my TikTok when Janie comes home from running errands. Sorry, I'm taking over the kitchen table, which is your office.
31:27 Speaker 08 Okay.
31:28 Dan Pashman? Janie and I have been together long enough that she doesn't even ask why I have a half gallon of ice cream, a whole pie, and a bottle of bourbon out in the middle of the afternoon. But I tell her anyway. I'm becoming a TikTok star.
31:40 Speaker 08 Oh, are you, do you have to sing for that? Or dance? What does that mean?
31:47 Dan Pashman? There's a lot of food TikTok stuff out there, too.
31:49 Speaker 08 So wait, what are you making?
31:51 Dan Pashman? A slice of pie with vanilla ice cream and a little bourbon on top.
31:55 Speaker 08 Are you sure you wanna use this bowl?
31:58 Dan Pashman? Well, I need to be able to mix stuff up inside it, but I also want it to have low walls so that you can see the cross section of the pie.
32:03 Speaker 08 See, don't you wish we kept those yellow bowls that you returned?
32:06 Dan Pashman? These bowls are beautiful. Janie helps me with the first shot I want, which is a scoop of ice cream falling onto the slice of pie. All right. Three, two, one, drop it. Whoa. I think we got our first shot. Thank you.
32:25 Speaker 08 I bet Jake Cohen doesn't take this long.
32:29 Dan Pashman? With that, Janie walks away. This is not her top priority today. I finished shooting the video and then it's time to record voiceover. And since I'm a podcast host, I figure this should be easy. Tap or long press to record. The perfect way to eat a slice of pie. No, hang on. That's my intro. So the end of the video should end with me saying like, and I just showed you. And it will loop back to the beginning, the perfect way to eat a slice of pie. Oh, man, this is some art right here. Chop it up. Chop it up some more. Add a teaspoon, ah, messed it up. All right, this can't possibly be the way that TikTok actually works. Mmm, so melty, so crunchy, but we're not finished yet.
33:13 Dan Pashman? Add a teaspoon of bourbon. Uh. Let's try this again, voiceover, take two. The most amazing way to eat a slice of pie. Oh, my God, I think I lost like the last five things I shot. So crunchy, so melty, but we're not finished yet. Uh, this is so annoying.
33:34 Speaker 08 So just forget about it.
33:36 Dan Pashman? No, we made a whole episode based on me trying to make this dumb video. I can't get anything on TikTok to work right. Maybe that's the end of the story, Dan couldn't figure out TikTok. All right, this is my last piece of pie and the last ice cream. And I better know this shot or I'm gonna be screwed. Here we go. And you just learned.
33:55 Speaker 07 The most amazing way to eat a piece of.
33:57 Dan Pashman? Oh, yes, the loop works. Oh, my God. I don't think I have anything to be a TikTok star. Now that it's done, though, that was kind of fun. A half gallon of ice cream, 90% of a pecan pie, several shots of bourbon. And six dirty dishes later, my video is done. Well, till a few days later, we're not reshoot a couple of things and make a few tweaks. Yep, definitely taking Joanne's advice and not overthinking it. I decide I'll post my video the Sunday night before Thanksgiving because you know, people have pie on the brain around that time. But before I do, I set a benchmark. If the video gets 100,000 views in the first 24 hours, I will consider it viral. That's a lot more than I've ever gotten on anything on Instagram.
34:41 Dan Pashman? If I get a million views in 24 hours, that's like super viral. I post the video. I don't share it to any of my other channels. This is the moment of truth. Will my TikTok go viral? Will I have to quit my day job as a podcast host and my side hustle as a pasta maker and move into the hype house? Which is, I think, a real place. All right, my TikTok has been up for 15 minutes. And so far, I have
35:09 Dan Pashman? one view.
35:12 Speaker 09 Who viewed it?
35:13 Dan Pashman? I don't know. As I tell my daughter Becky, at this pace, in 24 hours, I'll have 96 views. Not exactly what I was hoping for. I'm kind of nervous.
35:25 Dan Pashman? And there are really no stakes whatsoever, but like.
35:28 Speaker 09 What could go wrong though? I mean, the worst thing that could happen is you don't get as many views as you hope for. And maybe you'll get more views tomorrow.
35:36 Dan Pashman? Becky's right, and I do get some more views the next day. 24 hours after posting, I call up Bon Appetit editor Bettina Muccalantall, who I talked to earlier in my journey. She's seen my video. So Bettina, it's now been 24 hours since I posted my first ever TikTok. And as of this moment, it has 609 views, which I think we can safely say is not viral.
36:02 Speaker 10 I as of this moment, it is not viral. The thing that we prefaced our conversation with the other time was that like, I feel like you could never guarantee virality online. You know, I think it was, I think it's like a valiant effort.
36:16 Dan Pashman? Where did I go wrong?
36:17 Speaker 10 I think the one thing I would do would be like the very first shot is like you holding up the bowl plate and bringing it up to the camera. And then it goes into the shot of the ice cream going on to the pie. I probably would have done the like ice cream going on to the pie as the first shot.
36:34 Dan Pashman? Really?
36:34 Speaker 10 I think at first glance, it's like a little hard to tell what's happening.
36:38 Dan Pashman? That, I mean, that makes a lot of sense, right? It, it, so the, the very first shot is the finished product and it's very melty. And I guess since I know what it is, it looks amazingly delicious to me. But if you, if, with no context whatsoever, it kind of looks like a bowl of slop.
36:52 Speaker 10 It doesn't look like pie immediately.
36:54 Dan Pashman? It's, it's, it's a little too much to parse.
36:56 Speaker 10 Yeah, I do think like the second shot is really good though, like that, like perfect little like melty scoop of ice cream going on to the pie, like that looked good to me.
37:04 Dan Pashman? Man, man, you know, at first, for the longest time, the video was gonna, was starting with the, the shot of the scoop of ice cream going on the, on the pie. And then I thought, no, wait, it looks so good to me at the end and it tastes so good. And like, I, I should, I, you know, a lot of videos, like, you know, they start with the finished product to show you, and then they go backwards to kind of like hook you with the delicious shot. But I guess my shot of deliciousness was kind of like too visually confusing. You know what I did, Bettina? I overthought it.
37:29 Speaker 10 I feel like I always realize as soon as I've hit like toast on a video, like something I would have changed, but you know, it's always that thing about hindsight.
37:41 Dan Pashman? Right after my video posted, when I saw it wasn't getting many views, I was disappointed. But very quickly I was like, whatever, I have other things to worry about. Then I talked to Bettina and she made it seem like I was so close. And I don't get to redo it, you know? All the social media apps, they know when you're posting something similar to a previous post, if it bombs the first time, there's not much you can do to change the algorithm's mind. Just one bad decision about the first three seconds was all it took to relegate it to TikTok obscurity. It's like I was playing blackjack and I needed a nine and I got a 10. And when you get that close to winning, it's hard to resist coming back for more. But this may not be my last talk. Tick? Whatever.
38:22 Dan Pashman? If you're curious to see my TikTok, you can find me there right now at the sporkful or check me out on Instagram. Now that the experiment's over, I did share my pie video there. On Instagram, I'm also at the sporkful. Special thanks to Bettina Macalintal, associate editor at Bon Appetit. She's on TikTok at Bettina Mac. That's Bettina M A K. We also heard from Professor Emily Cantwell. Her new book, Food Instagram, is out next year. And Joanne Lee Molinaro just released a cookbook called The Korean Vegan. You can also find her on TikTok at The Korean Vegan. Quick reminder, send us your New Year's food resolutions. Record a voice memo with your name and tell me what food you resolved to eat more of in the new year and why. Send it to me at hello at sporkful.com.
39:07 Dan Pashman? Thanks. This show is produced by me along with senior producer
39:11 Speaker 11 Emma Morgenstern.
39:12 Dan Pashman? And producer Andres O'Hara. Our editor is
39:15 Speaker 05 Tracy Samuelson.
39:16 Dan Pashman? The show is mixed by Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher. Our executive producers are Peter Clowney and Daisy Rosario. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
39:27 Speaker 11 And I'm Alice in Ottawa, Ontario, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.
39:47 Dan Pashman? This reheat was produced by
39:49 Speaker 02 Gianna Palmer.
39:51 Dan Pashman? The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me along with managing producer
39:54 Speaker 11 Emma Morgenstern.
39:55 Dan Pashman? And senior producer Andres O'Hara. Our engineer is Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Sirius XM Podcasts. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the Sirius XM app? Yes, the Sirius XM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the Sirius XM app by going to siriusxm.com/sporkful. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
40:40 Speaker 05 Meet Craig. Craig manages the local haunted house. He's got a lot to juggle. Tangled cobwebs, flickering lights, and scheduling vampires.
40:49 Speaker 12 Count, it's time for your break. I'll break when I'm dead. You are dead. That's like your whole thing. Here, have a Kit Kat. Hmm. Fine. Fifteen minutes, but no longer. Good. I'm grabbing a Kit Kat, too.
41:04 Speaker 05 Nobody should have to wait until they're dead to take a break. Have a break. Have a Kit Kat.
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