A human pyramid, Santa Claus and a mariachi band. These things have one common denominator: first-year media communication major, Weston Van Soest.
Van Soest has gone viral on Instagram and TikTok for recording people’s reactions as he knocks on their doors to create engaging videos in Point Loma Nazarene University’s freshman dorm halls. He’s brought in a local mariachi band, shaved his friend’s head, dressed up as Santa and even served breakfast in front of students’ doors.
It all started when Van Soest’s roommate sent him a video of people knocking on doors and posing in front of them to see the occupant’s reaction. Since Van Soest had prior experience making TikTok videos, his roommate urged him to make a similar video in their dorm hall, Hendricks. Their first video did well, but the views increased once Van Soest recorded his “human pyramid” video.
“[I] knocked on people’s doors, and made the pyramid bigger and bigger,” Van Soest said. “Then that went viral. We [realized] this is so fun, and there’s so much we can do with this. So we started coming up with random, creative ideas and ways of pranking people at their dorms.”
His most popular video has 18.5 million views on Instagram and 62.2 million on TikTok. Wearing a colorful, smiley face suit, Van Soest knocked on Angelica Moser’s door, a first-year multimedia journalism major. Pretending to be a weatherman, Moser and her roommates couldn’t stop laughing as Van Soest walked around their room, threw off his suit jacket, jumped on their bunkbed and reported, “It’s a beautiful, sunny day in sunny San Diego.”
“We thought it was the funniest thing ever,” Moser said. “It just brought so much excitement and light to our room. … You can tell that he’s doing it to serve the Lord, bring people together and just bring joy and excitement to Hendricks.”
For someone scrolling on social media, they might come across Van Soest’s videos and move on after getting a good laugh. However, for residents of Hendricks Hall, his videos have become more than just funny content for social media. They’ve built an undeniable sense of community.
“I think Hendricks as a dorm is closer because of these videos,” Van Soest said. “I can’t even take credit for all the videos, because a lot of my friends give me the ideas and I wouldn’t be able to film without them. It’s totally a group effort. It’s been really fun to see the community that’s formed.”
Nolan Palm, a first-year business administration major, lives across the hall from Van Soest and met him during Welcome Week. Palm has participated in many of Van Soest’s dorm pranks and echoed that these videos have brought community to Hendricks.
“I’ve met so many people [on every floor],” Palm said. “But not only have [these videos] brought Hendricks together, but also Klassen. A couple of his videos were at Klassen, and I met 10 to 15 people just from making videos there.”
While Van Soest naturally brought in views from people in his dorm hall, the millions of views he’s received on social media have been organic. Aside from having a posting schedule, the virality of his videos has been random.
“I can’t say I fully know or can fully take credit for any of the success because a lot of it is luck,” Van Soest said. “I think some videos deserve to go viral that don’t, and some videos don’t necessarily deserve to go viral that do.”
Van Soest said that college content is a niche subject that doesn’t often get covered on social media, which could also contribute to his success. But Van Soest emphasized that if you want to make videos like his, it’s more important to have fun with it than to get caught up in the numbers.
“If you’re not having fun with it, you shouldn’t be doing it,” Van Soest said. “The goal in mind shouldn’t be to chase the high numbers. That doesn’t bring any sort of fulfillment. So if you enjoy the videos and the content you’re making, you’ll end up really enjoying the process. Also, consistency is key. The more you do it, the better you’ll get at it and the more fun it’ll become.”
Since success came so fast for Van Soest, he said he’s feeling out where he wants to take his social media pages and is seeing what the Lord leads him to do next. In the meantime, Van Soest’s viral dorm hall videos can be found on Instagram @westonvansoest.
Grace Barrera 
Tessa Balc