Cold Sidewalks Vs. TikTok Fame: What The Cookie Craze Isn’t Teaching

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

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It’s 15 degrees in Eastern Pennsylvania, but with the extreme cold and wind advisory that’s been issued for the weekend, it feels more like negative temperatures. On Super Bowl Sunday, I’m standing outside a local pizza place with my 11-year-old daughter and another sixth grader with one goal in mind: sell Girl Scout cookies to every person stopping by to pick up pizzas and wings for the big game later.

In the end, we didn’t get many sales that night. Some cookie booths go better than others, and you never really know until you get there. As we stood there, shivering, huddling close to a small portable propane heater and greeting every potential customer with a smile, I knew the girls were completing the mission of the cookie program. They were learning the value of hard work, dedication, entrepreneurship, and salesmanship. Beyond that, they were learning that in the real world, success doesn’t usually come easily. 

By now most people have seen the incredible story of a 6-year-old Daisy Scout Pim Neill from Western Pennsylvania who went viral for breaking the record for most boxes of cookies sold in a single season. Early reports showed she had sold more than 80,000 boxes, but once national news outlets picked up the story, that number ballooned to more than 100,000 boxes. It’s an incredible, uplifting story, and Pim is undeniably adorable.

But there’s also a lesson here — or rather, the lack of one. As it’s been reported, her parents posted videos of the scout practicing her sales pitch on social media. Pim earned a following on TikTok, starting with a video of her saying, “Hi, my name is Pim. Do you want to buy some Girl Scout Cookies?” 

That post went viral and then mega viral. While many Girl Scout service units have rules against posting sales pitches on community Facebook groups, it’s fair game to use personal social media accounts to drum up sales. 

Last year, my two daughters recorded a skit about freezing Girl Scout cookies now to enjoy in the summer, which, after I posted it on my personal Facebook page, led to a local business owner purchasing 100 boxes to distribute to customers. Social media is an important tool, and it’s useful. But at what point do we admit that going viral on social media changes everything?

Pitched as “the largest girl-run business in the world,” the cookie program is meant to impart life skills on young women. The organization conducted one study that identified five key skills Girl Scout cookie sellers learn, including goal setting, decision-making, money management, people skills, and business ethics.

When a Scout sells tens of thousands of cookies by going viral, it’s sending a message about scale over substance. It tells young girls that the goal is the number — the boxes moved, the record broken, the badge earned — rather than the experience of earning it. When Pim looked into a camera and gave her pitch, she was adorable, and she was brave. But she wasn’t selling to anyone in particular. 

She wasn’t cold or hungry or bored. She didn’t have to read a stranger’s body language and decide whether to keep engaging or politely let him or her pass. She didn’t have to motivate herself to get back out there after a slow booth. There is learning in rejection and recalibration. The friction is where the lesson happens. Kids today would be wise to learn that making a video and hoping to go viral is not a sustainable business model.

There’s something slightly uncomfortable about thousands of people pulling out their credit cards, not because a young entrepreneur convinced them, but because an algorithm served them something cute. The transaction becomes about us — our feelings about childhood or our desire to be part of a viral moment — rather than about a young girl learning life skills. In that sense, the most viral Girl Scout cookie sales pitch in history may also be one of the least instructive, and certainly the least repeatable.

None of this is Pim’s fault, or even her parents’ fault. They used the tools available to them, and the result was extraordinary by any conventional measure. But it’s worth asking what we’re celebrating when we celebrate it. Are we celebrating a young girl learning to run a business? Or are we just accepting that going viral is the new measure of success?

The girls shivering outside that pizza place will almost certainly remember that night. They’ll remember the people who stopped and the people who didn’t. They’ll remember that they showed up even when it hurt and then came back to do it again.