A haf hour after my second Gilroy Garlic Festival video went live on my YouTube channel, I got a comment with two questions that made no sense.

“Wasn’t there a shooting at this place? Who else is here because of the shooting?”

I stared at the comment in disbelief. Surely, this was a joke. A shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival?

A Google search showed that an active shooter alert went live at the same time as my video. Looking at the real time analytics, both videos experienced a sharp spike in traffic. No surprise. My two videos with Chef Tom Colicchio in a cooking demo and announcing the winners of the Great Garlic Cook-Off were the newest videos for the Gilroy Garlic Festival.

I pinned this comment to both of my videos:

“There is an active shooter at the Gilroy Garlic Festival, reported at 5:30 PM Pacific today (7/28/2019). The two videos that I posted were from yesterday and have nothing to do with the shooting. Thoughts and prayers for the victims.”

Since the mainstream media was slow to report the shooting, I watched it unfold on Twitter while the views for my videos climbed steadily upward for the next three hours.

Read the rest of the essay on Medium.