The First Time I Went Viral

It was the first week of 2024, my partner and I both had COVID, and we were isolated in our apartment with absolutely nothing to do and nowhere to go.

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A few months prior, I had seen this TikTok trend where Mercedes had posted a video of a model showing off different parts of a Mercedes and then saying “Mercedes” in a German accent into a mic. TikTokers had been using that video and making their own parodies of it by caressing different parts of their beat up 1986 Toyota or their child’s Little Tyke’s car and saying something like “middle class” or “Little Tyke’s” into the mic.

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Upon showing my boyfriend a particular video participating in this trend, he looked at me and said “I think it would be really funny if we did that trend with your wheelchair.” I chuckled at first. But the more I started thinking about it over the next 30 seconds, the more I realized how good of an idea it was. I had already been creating content consistently for a few months, and I never really participated in trends. What was the worst that could happen?

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We grabbed my chair, a mini microphone, my phone, and what little strength we had due to our COVID wrecked bodies. We took a look at the first shot of the original Mercedes ad, which was the model flicking the hood of the car, looking into the camera, and saying “Mercedes”. The most logical thing for me to do was to stand by my chair, flick the wheel, stare directly into the camera and say “disabled”. Easy enough.

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Once that clip was recorded, the next one was of her stroking the grill of the car with her nails. So I copied the movement and stroked my footplate. We kept recording the video shot-for-shot just like this. It only took us about 10 minutes to film the entire thing and it took me another 10 to edit it.

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I put it into TikTok, threw some hashtags in the caption, and hit “post” without a second thought. I checked the video a few minutes later and saw that it already had almost 10,000 views. “Oh,” I said “this one’s going fast!” Little did we know that this was only the beginning.

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After the first 24 hours, the video had over a million views. I only had a few videos at this point that had ever gotten this much attention. And not only was this one gaining tons of traction virtually, but every time I would leave my house, I was also being recognized by strangers in public as “the Mercedes girl”, which was a completely new thing for me.

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Every day I would check the status of the video to find that it had usually jumped up to at least half a million views more than when I last checked it. While my boyfriend was thrilled at all of this attention, I was feeling a little overwhelmed by it all.

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On one hand, it was exciting! As a content creator, this is the goal I have for all of my videos. But as delighted as I was that I was reaching this goal, once the comments started rolling in, so did my anxiety. Some viewers were praising me for our idea and my comedic timing, while others were demanding an explanation as to how I could stand but also need a wheelchair. Some were even starting conspiracies that I was “faking” my disabilities.

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While I understood that I didn’t owe anyone my medical history (and if they really wanted information, they could go to my hundreds of other videos to gain context and education), I did feel pressured to provide some kind of explanation. And I knew that most people were going to advise me to just “ignore the haters,” but when thousands of comments are coming in per day, it’s a little difficult to do that.

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After a few days, I slowly came to the realization that I wasn’t alone. Every time I saw a hate comment, it was abruptly followed by one of my followers who responded before I even had the chance to. As someone who didn’t grow up with a whole lot of friends my age, now knowing that I had a community behind me was incredible. It felt like I had a support system outside of my close circle of friends and family for the first time in my life.

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I also began to understand that any engagement on that video simply boiled down to just that: engagement. It didn’t matter if it was a comment of hate or support. Either way, it boosted that video in terms of the algorithm, so it was being pushed out to more people. And because of that, I was making more and more profit off of it.

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Today, the Mercedes video sits at a little over 30 million views with 4.8 million likes, and 15.7 thousand comments.

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That is the story of the first time I went viral and how I learned a very valuable lesson: they can hate all they want; the checks still clear, and kindness always wins.

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Cassidy Huff is a nationally recognized disability rights advocate, writer, and content creator. As a physically disabled and hard of hearing woman, she brings a unique perspective to her work, centering equity, accessibility, and authentic representation. Cassidy is a best-selling author, public speaker, and the host of a podcast focused on amplifying disabled voices and lived experiences. Her advocacy spans across digital media, education, and entertainment, and her work has been featured in national campaigns and conversations around disability rights. In addition to writing, Cassidy is the director and producer of two original web series highlighting adaptive adventures and the disability community. She uses her platform to inform, empower, and shift narratives—whether through writing, long-form, short-form content, or public speaking. 

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