Matt Brown, a Connecticut Tik Toker, became popular on the app during the summer of 2021 after his first video went viral. Many of his videos have gotten over 10,000 views, and two of his videos have over a million views. Brown makes transition edits on his account, but his niche is finding twists on widespread trends.

     The first occurrence of Brown’s characteristic spin on trends happened in September, when “mask fishing” (a term for when people use masks to cover their real appearance) began to trend on Tik Tok. In Brown’s version, which received 754,000 views, he said he wasn’t even going to do the trend because he already knew he was mask fishing.

     Brown’s personalized spin on the “mask fishing” videos is a prime example of how changing up trends results in his growing follower count. The article How to go viral on TikTok in just 5 steps! mentions the importance of posting about someone’s talents or what they are good at. Once Brown found what he was good at, which was following trends, relatable content, his attractiveness, and edits, his account began to grow.

     When he was stuck at 10,000 followers, he made friends with other influencers who helped grow his channel to 48,000 followers. When he found his niche and stopped basing popularity off of his friends, his following grew to 60,000 followers. He gained many followers in a short amount of time by learning how to make quality content and his new goal is 100,000 followers.

     With his peers criticizing TikTok, Brown made a new account with nobody from his school following it, but when the first Tik Tok he made received attention, people inevitably found it. During this time, people giggled at him in school, talked about him, and watched his Tik Toks during class. Many people would also go up to him calling him cute or attempt to make conversation with him.

     Brown claims that he doesn’t receive many hate comments on TikTok and that all of his commenters are generally nice people. He also doesn’t delete many comments, but when he does, he says, “you have to know that they’re not worth your time, if you put it in their perspective, it’s them scrolling through their feed, leaving a comment and then scrolling.”

     Many websites point to a recent problem regarding the so-called “cancel culture”. According to an article, The Toxic Selectivity of TikTok Cancel Culture , people usually criticize creators who take a stance on controversial issues, using their platform to discuss them. 

     Brown admits that because he is not as popular as other tiktokers with 1 million followers, he doesn’t have to work as hard to maintain his image so that it fits what the majority of people want.

     Similarly, Brown states, “I’m afraid of giving my opinion on things, people demonize you because of your opinion sometimes.”

     The article on cancel culture also explains that being popular on a social media platform usually makes someone get a different type of attention where anything they say is monitored and can be leaked depending on the content.

     His friend Tyra In, who he met before he became famous, says, “He’s the same, he hasn’t changed. He’s literally the same person, just famous now, people care about what he does now.”

     Brown also comments that people sometimes forget that he is a regular person. There have been incidents where people left comments fetishizing him because he is Asian, and others where people spammed his DM’s talking about how they stalk him. A possible solution for this would be shutting the comments down, but Brown says that people thought of him as mean and intimidating when he did this.

     Brown still limits what he says on social media to avoid getting cancelled, and mostly maintains his popularity by doing trends he is interested in and making content that is relatable. By doing this, he appeals to his followers and continues to grow his account.