Balloon Guy Gets Serious

Dear reader, I see you. I know that you have returned to my blog week in and week out demanding to know more about my TikTok account. I’m sure every week you’ve logged onto Medium, quickly dashed to my account, and checked what story I posted. And every time, immeasurable disappointment.

How is the account doing? Is he still famous? Who is Antonio and why am I following him? These questions have raced through your mind, no doubt. Well, I have fantastic news for you: The account still exists. I have 193k followers, and although the views have slowed down, 3 of my videos over the last few months have blown up over 1 million views.

All those things are cool. Very cool, but the account isn’t what it used to be. It just kind of exists. I’m in the limbo between “dead account” and “has been.” Basically, I’m like Ben Rothlisberger. Every time I think its dead, I have a video do very well. All of my videos get over 10k views a pop, so I haven’t been forgotten. I see many forgotten accounts with tons of followers that fail to get 1000 views. And I did get on House of Highlight’s TikTok and Snapchat page last week, so I haven’t been deserted either.

But I won’t lie, the spark that was there those first few weeks is gone. After months and months and months of balloon games, ballon highlights, it does get old. Do I hate it? No! I selfishly love that I have nearly 200k followers, my own merch line, and that I’ve been in a Mountain Dew ad. All that stuff is cool, and something that most people can’t say they’ve done.

I’ve seen many other accounts go down this same road: they strike gold with a niche video, continue to post more of those videos, and then that becomes their identity. Roadie Austin was an account of a guy doing ping pong trick shots, and soon he was THE ping pong trickshot guy. So he posted for a while. And when he eventually suffered burnout, he slowly stopped.

I went to Roadie’s page the other week. He has only posted sparingly the last couple of months, of him doing regular stuff: Him making a joke video, his dog being funny, him going on a hike. And every comment section looks like this:

“What happened to the ping pong trickshots”

“Did you give up on ping pong trickshots”

“Yo keep up the ping pong shots”

“First”

“Yo come back and finish what you’ve started”

These are all real comments, by the way. When he tried to switch it up, people demanded what he gave them early on. And when he lost enjoyment he stopped.

I don’t think I’ll end up quite like Roadie. I still post fairly often, and I love interacting with fans, as well as weeing a wave of 9 year olds that I’ve inspired to play keep up balloon. But I will say this: Internet fame is fickle. You better hope you like what you committed too because once you become that guy, you’re that guy forever.

Sincerely,

The Balloon Guy