I'm Sorry David Solomon... I Guess?

I posted a video that has been watched 1.6 million times. The analytics tells me that if you lined all of the time the video has been viewed it would play for a consecutive 244 days. The American Revolution took less time. But why am I still unhappy?

Let me give you a little bit of context on my relationship with virality. That is… if you've already made it this far, you must be pretty invested. Reading a full sentence written by anyone else in 2026 is like reading War & Peace in three languages.

I have spent the last decade believing that going viral was the key to making it in the entertainment industry, and frankly I still think that. Of course, I'm not new, I understand that it's not something you can just manufacture. No matter how many "How To Go Viral" articles or videos you watch, in the end it's still just a roll of the dice. I've seen the dumbest shit with millions of views and the smartest observations barely scraping the bottom of the proverbial social media barrel. Most of the time, there's just no rhyme or reason.

I posted a video a week ago that has, due to some sort of cruel miracle, amassed 1.6 million views… so far. This video has resulted in close to 400 followers for me, as well as a gazillion likes and shares and comments and all sorts of dopamine stimulating orange notifications. I should preface everything I'm going to say next by saying, I'm super grateful for those follows and the likes and all that… but I don't know if at my core I'm happy with what I've done.

I went to my soon-to-be brother-in-law's MBA graduation from Wharton business school, and at the commencement speech, David Solomon, the Goldman Sachs CEO, played a shitty EDM song that he bragged took him 10 seconds to make on Suno. This act of reckless lameness sparked the 1.6 million view video. Not necessarily because it's AI, but because it was used as a punchline to a speech he made about striving for excellence and dedication to passion.

As an artist in a room of aspiring wealth managers, I felt a bit insulted, and isolated. I posted a 20 second clip of him doing some dumbass hand waves and dancing to a largely unresponsive crowd with some text over the top summarizing his message to the graduating class, with some satirical and perhaps inflammatory editorialization. I guess that last part was just the gasoline needed on the kindling this CEO had provided me. I didn't tell people to hate him, but I did frame the moment in a way that made hate easier.

The comments on this video were wild! Everything from intelligent discourse about AI and its place in society to people calling for this man's execution. It was insane. I hated it. While I can't say I'm the biggest fan of what this guy did, I certainly don't think he needs to be fired from his position, or hung, or stood in front of a firing squad, or tortured, or any number of other creative suggestions from my comment section. So while I was reaping the benefits of his digital massacre in the form of follows and bright orange notifications, I felt worse and worse with each comment I read.

Not just because of what the people were saying, but because of what this means in the grand scheme of things. This was good for me after all, I have, in my humble opinion, a wealth of compelling comedy to share with the world and I'm thrilled to welcome 400 new people into an audience I am very keen on cultivating, but at what cost... And more importantly is that what I have to do?

I still believe social media matters. I still believe attention can open doors for my art. But artists are always warned not to sell their souls for fame, and this felt uncomfortably close. I clearly touched a nerve for many people, people who were angry and also felt insulted and isolated by his message, and for that I'm happy. I'm glad these people feel like they aren't alone with their feelings and their anger, I'm glad they had a chance to voice their feelings, and I wasn't even the only one who posted such a video of CEOs shoving AI down our throats, but I didn't want to be the one leading the mob of torches and pitchforks, no matter what the cause is.

My goal as an artist is to offer differing perspectives and challenge people to consider something new. This felt narrow, limiting, and entirely outside of my control. It makes me think… is this what I have to do? Is this what we all have to do? Do we all have to sell our complex soul for shreds of shiny and fiery rhetoric that can be boiled down to a binary HATE IT or LOVE IT? Why is that so heavily rewarded in social media? Does complexity and nuance even stand a chance in our 3 second hook economy? I don't know… maybe if people already knew who I was, and I had a body of work that championed nuance, people would give me 5 seconds instead of 3, but how do I even get to that point without selling nuance for numbers.

I don't have answers to these questions. The social media post still results in notifications, a week later. I'm still getting follows. I'm still getting comments like "they should all be shot". I try to ignore it and move on with my silly little stand up videos that I work really hard to write and capture that maybe amass 3K views and -10 followers… if I'm lucky. My message is not as sexy, but I think it has more heart… I hope that we can find a way to escape the necessity for hatred to spread news. I hope we can resist the temptation of condemnation at such an extreme over 20 seconds of stimulus. I hope. I just don't know.