When you hear the phrase “TikTok,” does your mind immediately go to the 2009 hit single by pop star Kesha, or do you picture an endless stream of videos of young people across the world?
If you are one of Lizzy Young’s 143.8k TikTok followers, you might say the latter.
With more than 5.9 million likes on her videos, Miami University junior Lizzy Young has become something close to famous.
When she first launched her account in December 2018, she had no idea that one of the first videos she would ever post would be the one to catapult her enormous following.
“It got, like, 15,000 likes, and for someone with, like, no followers, it was just weird,” Young said.
It might seem odd that a girl with no followers could get thousands of likes and views on a random video, but the algorithm TikTok uses to promote users’ videos doesn’t always take a user’s following into consideration.
Though there are a few theories of how the algorithm actually works, the Hypebot theory makes the most sense in Young’s case. Basically, TikTok’s system will push a user’s new video in a blend of popular ones so that they don’t see a string of bad videos in a row. Depending on how much of your video is watched and how many likes or shares it receives, it may end up getting promoted to thousands of other users.
“It’s crazy how much it’s grown from last year, and I just love how anyone can become big on the app,” Young said. “You don’t need an agent to discover you or anything.”
Even though she currently has 5.9 million likes on her videos, Young doesn’t consider herself a social media influencer.
Young certainly has the following to make an impact, but she doesn’t plan to expand her “brand” any more than she already has, and wants to keep her TikTok and Instagram presences separate.
Young also doesn’t take herself, or her channel, too seriously. This part of her personality also helps block out the haters — she rarely thinks of the negativity she receives in the comment section.
“I don’t really care about the negative ones,” she said. “A lot of them are just annoying, and they're funny cause it’s, like, people with no followers, so they're not showing their face or anything.”
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It’s always a little plus to her when younger girls comment nice things and say they love her and her videos.
And who doesn’t love a compliment or two?
Some of her biggest fans and supporters are the brands she has worked with. Young has worked with Tinder as an ambassador, DIFF eyewear, BooHoo, Princess Polly and Hero Cosmetics.
If you’re thinking of downloading the app and adding to its 500 million active users, the clock is TikTokin.’
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