I don’t know exactly what I did, but I think something was unlocked, turned on, cranked up… or something? I had an Instagram post go viral! Well, viral for me. Let’s back up. I have a few social media sites that pertain to a few different topics, one of which is my “Remember The Drive-In” account. This particular account was started in May of 2019 and the sole purpose was to help generate interest in the vintage drive-in movie speaker restorations that I was doing and selling at area car shows. I quickly also started added my vintage gumball machine restoration photos and videos as well. With Covid happening less than a year after opening the account, going to the car shows dried up for a bit and so I built a website: www.RememberTheDriveIn.com. And in that past seven years on IG at the most I MIGHT get up to 25 likes on a post? But the reality is the past two years it has simply been dead. I would get 3-8 likes and I know 3-4 of them would be family! It was a waste of time when I would look at the metrics – my followers, around 330, simply were not seeing my Reels and Photos. Frustrated, I was just about to give up on the account and just let it sit. And then this past Wednesday happened.  

Wednesday mid-morning I posted a simple 18 second video as a “Reel” on IG of a 1960s Koropp drive-in movie speaker set that I had finished restoring that week. It was really no different than the hundreds of other drive-in videos I’ve posted where I walk up the speaker set with the camera while it plays a vintage drive-in intermission or snack bar ad, I go up and down the speaker set showing close-ups of the work, then I grab the left speaker with my free hand to show a close up of the speaker enclosure. Text is added showing my website address. I write a simple description about what it is and when it is from, as well as a few hashtags… ALWAYS the same few hashtags. By that afternoon I was sitting on the couch talking with my wife and I showed her, “Look at this! I have 2,000 likes on my video today! This has never happened!”