By: Rory Gresham and Tayla Wibecan
Mustang Nation and the TikTok world collide. Most people only know the school for its countless athletic teams and the strict tradition of student and athletic success. However, to date, countless famous Tik Tokers reside right here in the residents’ halls of the Stevenson University campus.
Found scrolling through the “For You Page,” Gina Rowe, a first-year student, also known as “Hunniebunzi” to her 50,000 plus followers on Tik Tok has gone viral. She was more than happy to sit down and dive deeper into her recent success on the world-renowned social media application. After asking her why she downloaded Tik Tok Hunniebunzi said, “I noticed on Instagram that’s where most the funny videos were coming from so I just thought why not have…(that) app instead. I also noticed that it had a crazy algorithm that can get people rich and famous very easily.”
Sean McDonald, also known as “Half Decent Golf” made his account for a Stevenson class. Now, he has more than 20,000 followers and is working his way up to more. It all started when McDonald registered for Professor Jeannine Morber’s E-marketing class.
McDonald humbly refers to his fame as an “outburst of followers.” In fact, he hasmultiple videos with more than a million views, so ‘outburst’ is certainly one way of putting it. He says his fan base is growing every day and he is asked about his TikTok around school.
“My friends that find the video will text me and be like, ‘I didn’t know you where famous,’” McDonald said, “and I always take it as a joke because I don’t take this account all that serious even though I do enjoy posting content.”
Professor Morber teaches Marketing and classes with titles like “E-Marketing and Social Media Marketing.” She knows her way around TikTok and its unique algorithm.
“That’s what I think makes Tik Tok so unique,” Professor Morber said. “You can make an account tomorrow and get a huge following within a couple weeks.” With the new increase of famous Tik Tokers around campus, Morber says it’s funny because years ago when she was teaching the class, when she mentioned Tik Tok the students would roll their eyes because they thought it was stupid, “I remember saying, ‘Remember this day because you’re either going to be totally right and it’s going to go away, or its gonna end up being really good.”
Professor Morber had a point. Tik Tok is rising with more downloads each day.
The summer of 2019 is when the app began to take off with more than 500 million downloads from the Google Play store. At first it began as a platform to share funny videos and comical contemporary trends, but now with Tik Tok paying users with 10,000 followers or more it has turned into a source of passive income for teens and young adults.
“I’ve made $55 which is not a lot, it pays per view, but my fans are the ones who actually pay me,” Gina said. “They pay me through Twitch, or they just donate for no reason because they want to see more content.”
Gina said she plans to continue her growth in popularity on TikTok. When asked to give some advice to people just starting out she said, “If you want to grow your TikTok page and go viral you need to be consistent and have quality content. You must post about 3 times a day when you are first starting and once you start growing you can post less, maybe 2 times a day or once or twice a week. Then once you start gaining loyal followers you should move them over to other platforms because TikTok doesn’t pay nearly as much as others like Instagram, where you can get sponsored.”