My dog's account got more views than my cooking page in one week

I run a small cooking page on Instagram, maybe 400 followers, just me filming my recipes with a phone stand in my Austin kitchen. Last month I posted a video of my dog sitting on the counter licking a spoon by accident, I didn't even edit it, just threw it up as a story. Next morning it had 12,000 views and my regular 3 minute pasta tutorial from the same week had 87. Now the algorithm feeds my dog content to people who have never seen my food, and my reel of a beef stew recipe got 40 views. I started testing it, posted my dog sleeping for 10 seconds and it hit 2,000 in an hour. Has anyone else had a random, non-topic clip completely take over their page while their actual niche work gets buried?

2 comments

2 Comments

hugotaylor5d ago

12,000 views for a spoon lick vs 87 for actual effort is the most Instagram thing I've ever heard.

singh.harper5d ago

Nah, hard disagree! That spoon lick is doing exactly what it needs to do, it gets people to stop scrolling for two seconds and feel something, even if it's just "what the hell." The 87 views on "actual effort" probably means the video isn't hooking anyone in the first three seconds, and that's on the creator, not the algorithm. People don't owe you views just because you worked hard, they owe you attention because you earned it. If that spoon creator figured out the cheat code for a dumb, fun reaction, good for them. The real lesson is to study why that dumb video works instead of being mad it does.