Kyle Scheele

I just shot the video because I'd already gone to all the work of doing the Photoshop thing.

And I'm like, I'll just tell this story.

I didn't realize at the time, I realize now is that there's this quote from the writer James Joyce.

He says, in the particular is contained the universal.

He says that in the context of somebody asked him why he always writes about the city of Dublin, all of his books, he talks about Dublin.

And he said, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin, I can get to the heart of any city in the world.

And then he said, in the particular is contained the universal.

And what I realized is that the thing that actually connects about that story is how particular it is, is that it is this really idiosyncratic story about somebody who's embarrassed about a photograph and doesn't like it and it continues to hang in their house.

That is such a universal truth.

All of us have a family portrait that we're like, oh my gosh, I look at my...

haircut.

Look at my mustache.

Why was I wearing that outfit?

Whatever.

And so that became this universal connection.

I couldn't have drawn those dots.

I couldn't have connected those dots or drawn that trajectory.

When I made that video, I posted it to 17 followers, not 1700, not 17,000, 17 individual followers.

And 25 hours later, I had a million.

And that became just the rocket ship that launched today of 2.9 million followers on TikTok.