Fleetwood Mac are now viral TikTok stars in their own right

If you weren’t familiar with the longboarding TikTok user named Nathan Apodaca, perhaps better known as @420doggface208, there’s a good chance you are now. After going incredibly viral last week, gliding along to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” and guzzling down Ocean Spray Cran-Raspberry juice, he’s had something of a moment. Apodaca’s incredibly pure, serene video functioned as a chaser to whatever fresh hells awaited us on the day of its virality (not checking what those were, just take my word for it.) Last week, TMZ reported that he’d already drawn $10,000 in donations, five days after he posted the video.

Virality’s a two-way street, so Apodaca wasn’t the only one to benefit from the surge in interest. Fleetwood Mac’s enjoyed a huge spike in interest for “Dreams,” tripling in sales and doubling its streams since Apodaca’s video went viral. The band’s Twitter account already tipped their hat, and now Mick Fleetwood downloaded TikTok to give it a shot for himself. “@420doggface208 had it right. Dreams and Cranberry just hits different,” Fleetwood captioned a video posted over the weekend. That’s right!

As these things go, the unlikely combo of “Dreams” + beverage + skateboarding has become a sort of viral challenge on TikTok over the past week. Not that there aren’t any other worthy contenders, but I’ve found it incredibly hard to top this pumpkin-headed dude dousing himself in a pumpkin spice latte:

TikTok has this uncanny ability to prolong a song’s shelf life, whether it’s an indie artist who forgot about an old hit, only to see it scale up the streaming charts, or an artist born long before the dawn of social media. It’s a fairly stark contrast to the viral challenges of the 2010s, when major labels would often will them into existence around a new single they wanted to scale up the charts. TikTok virality feels a bit more anarchic, and therefore way more fun to watch unfold. “Dreams,” Fleetwood Mac’s sole no. 1 single, somehow, is eternal, popping back up into the public consciousness every few years for one reason or another.

That said, there’s the case of Fleetwood Mac, one of the most successful acts of all time enjoying a large uptick in song sales and streaming revenue. And then you have Ocean Spray, a company that generates $2 billion in annual revenue. Apodaca comes from much simpler origins: last week, he told TMZ that he lives in an RV with no running water outside his brother's house, and owns a car with over 300,000 miles that wouldn’t start. Surely one of these parties could buy this guy a house!

I saw a friend point out that Fleetwood Mac and Ocean Spray should pay Apodaca $10 million at minimum for this, which feels like a reasonable start. There’s no such thing as a heartwarming social media story if the viral star who's most in need doesn’t reap the same benefits.