Inside the celebrity and culture of TikTok, as told by Charlotte’s famous creators
In the online world, Gen-Z residents are putting Charlotte on the map — through the social media app TikTok.
TikTok is a social media platform for posting short videos, between 15 seconds to one minute long, reminiscent of earlier apps such as Vine. Many might associate TikTok with the short and easily imitated dances shared by influencers such as Charli D’Amelio. But many prominent TikTok stars find their niche in comedy, memes, rants and more.
Charlotte residents Symone Brown, Joshua Cureton and Max Dressler have each developed a specific presence on the app and have garnered thousands — some even millions — of followers.
Modeeezy
Brown, 21, posts videos under the username @modeeezy, and now has 31,700 followers and 321,500 cumulative likes for her perspective, dancing and body positive videos. Brown first saw an increase in her followers after posting a set of videos called the “best friend series.”
In this series, Brown responds to point-of-view videos, “POVs” from Jakari Stern, another creator from Ohio. POVs directly address the audience, and by adding her perspective, Brown creates a storyline of two best friends talking.
Juztjosh
A resident of Waxhaw, Cureton, 18, has amassed 2.4 million followers under the handle @juztjosh for his videos of humorous rants, skits and political commentary. Cureton will attend the University of Miami in the fall.
In one video posted July 11, Cureton rants about a family in his neighborhood that rides around in a golf cart and tells a story about the childrens’ antics in messing up his yard after raking leaves. “I’ve been plotting my revenge for so long,” reads the caption.
Maxdressler
Dressler, 18, under the username @maxdressler, has amassed 4.7 million followers since he first started making videos in the summer of 2019. Dressler is known for his reaction videos, made by using TikTok’s “duet” feature, similar to Brown.
In Dressler’s responses, he uses a deadpan comedic style, often responding with, “I didn’t ask.”
Rise to TikTok stardom
Cureton first posted to TikTok in March 2019. But Cureton started producing content before TikTok was accepted as a mainstream social media platform. “I didn’t really take it as something to be proud of or anything like that, it was just something I did in my free time,” Cureton said.
About a month later, he realized his videos were gaining popularity. As one of the first and most popular Black creators on the app, Cureton was approached for a partnership with TikTok, and he represented the app at events and award shows. He even had the opportunity to attend the American Music Awards and announce nominees during the show.
“I was just a regular high school kid and now it’s something where people were paying to see me,” Cureton said.
Dressler first downloaded the app on July 15, 2019. He made a few videos, but it wasn’t anything serious. “It was the summer going into my senior year, and I was just having fun.”
Dec. 13 was the day his account skyrocketed. “I made two videos back-to-back that got 50 million views combined. And from that day on, for the next 30 days, every single day I gained a 100,000 followers.” One video was a duet delivered in his signature deadpan style. The other, a perspective video imagining him in 2046 at his son’s talent show.
By New Year’s, he had gained 3 million followers in just 30 days.
From that point on, Dressler was approached by talent agencies, offered promotion opportunities and attended high-profile events, including the social media convention Playlist Live.
For Brown, TikTok is a recent endeavour. She downloaded the app while recovering from a surgery earlier this year. She posted her first video in February and began her best friend series duetting with Jakari Stern in April.
“It was a point-of-view situation where we are best friends but it becomes more than that,” Brown said.
The series of about 12 videos plays like a TV show, with each new installment furthering a storyline. Brown said commenters asked for more and more videos and more interactions between the two content creators.
While Brown and Stern have never met in person, commenters hope they will someday.
“I jumped into one of his Instagram Lives and we went live together — the kids loved it, they adored it,” Brown said. “They were like, ‘You guys have to date later on down the line.’”
Behind the scenes
At the crux of TikTok videos is the ability for content to be reposted and reshared. Dancers share simplistic choreography that other dancers can re-create. Content creators can use audio sounds from other accounts as the background of their own videos. And many TikTokers choose to duet videos, which involves reposting one user’s video and then reacting, responding or adding to the original.
For Cureton, many of his videos come from following trending sounds. Then he asks himself: “How can I use this sound and make it different from other people?”
The nature of TikTok fame is short-lived. Users can scroll through the content shared from people they directly follow, or more often, through content on the For You Page. They For You Page uses an algorithm to display content that the app predicts you would enjoy, based on content you previously liked and shared.
Some content will populate on the For You Page randomly through hashtags, so sometimes it just takes one post from a content creator to go viral. “Sometimes when you post a video, it doesn’t even blow up until two weeks later, so it’s something that just happens spontaneously,” Cureton said.
Brown said she built her following through hashtags. On every TikTok she makes, she adds #fyp, for the For You Page, as well as hashtags for where she is from, #charlottenc and #704.
Her videos range from original dance challenges to perspective videos, where she talks about self-confidence. “I’m not afraid to live in my own skin,” she said.
But content creators have to sustain their followings. This is where finding a niche on the app is crucial — Cureton and Dressler found theirs in comedy; Brown, in her POVs and authenticity.
Dressler said he is known as the “POV king” or the “reaction god.” TikTok users send him videos and ask him to react to them. In creating this online persona, he was able to establish himself and his brand.
But when creators veer outside of their traditional niche, backlash is inevitable, Dressler said.
Online hate
Dressler had curated a very specific type of TikTok presence. Around April, he said he grew tired of his signature reaction and comedy videos. Instead, he wanted to branch into dancing.
In just a few weeks, he lost more than 300,000 followers.
Dressler said he received comments like, “Why did we make this kid famous?” or “Who thinks this kid is funny?”
“It was really hard for me because this was right when the virus hit and everyone was off from school, so I was literally just sitting in my room, all day every day, not being able to see anybody, and just sitting there reading thousands of hate comments,” he said.
People found his number and left voicemails, emails, texts — all saying horrible things, he said.
“But I got to the point where I was like, I am having so much fun,” he said. “I can’t keep focusing on all this negative stuff.”
Many people commented things like, “We want the old Max back.” Dressler said he went back to his old reaction videos and comedy routine, and the change seemed instant. He regained followers, and the hate commented ebbed.
“The hard part about TikTok is keeping your stream steady, and I mean that’s how it is with all artists, songwriters, anything — you’ve got to stay true to yourself,” he said.
Balancing school, work and newfound fame
Cureton’s TikTok reputation spread not just online but into the classroom at Cuthbertson High School. Cureton said some teachers were more relaxed around him and even asked to be included in videos. Friends asked to hang out with more, and random students would come up to him in the hallway for pictures.
At the Matthews Alive festival in 2019, Cureton said he was recognized by fans in the Charlotte area and was bombarded with photo requests and enthusiastic fans. “I think I’m used to it now, like how to react to it,” “But it still feels weird.”
“I love taking pictures with people, talking with them, engaging with them,” Cureton said. “But sometimes it just gets a little awkward, because we don’t know each other.”
Dressler graduated from The Fletcher School in Matthews this year. With a graduating class of only 16 other students, balancing his online reputation with extra attention at school wasn’t really a problem.
But managing the work from school with the demands of TikTok fame proved a challenge. When Dressler first gained a following over winter break, he could post up to 12 times a day. Returning for the second semester, he said his priorities were mixed up. “I did the wrong thing and put social media as my priority instead of school.”
“When you have all these platforms with millions of followers, you have to monitor them,” Dressler said. But it’s hard to monitor when sitting in a cell phone-less classroom.
In quarantine, Dressler said he was able to multitask. He could finish his assignments on his own time and then keep up his schedule of posting.
Brown works at the front desk of a hotel in Charlotte. But TikTok presents its own responsibilities of a full-time job. “But it is a full-time job that you can do on your own time, which is what I like,” she said.
The business side
So how does TikTok make money? For high-profile TikTokers, social media can bring in income. People can reach out to TikTokers to promote products, merchandise or music in exchange for money.
Before he was represented by an agency, Dressler said he was approached with offers to pay him to use a certain audio clip.
One way to gain followers involves collaborating with other content creators. And since most users are in big cities, such as Los Angeles and New York City, Cureton and Dressler’s 704 status puts them at a disadvantage.
Now with representation, Dressler’s agents arrange product promotions, which Dressler can either accept or deny.
Cureton said the app has recently expanded the possibilities of promotions, where TikTok will promote their videos as users scroll through the content. Through the talent agency and through his partnership with TikTok, he said he’s made a “substantial” amount.
“I came from a place in my life where everybody was saying that the only way for you to make a living was you had to go to college, you had to get a job, you had to do certain things,” Cureton said. “But social media just provided me a new outlet, a way to make money and support myself and help out with a lot of things around my house.”
Dressler even released his own line of merchandise, selling sweatshirts with his signature line, “I didn’t ask.” In two months of selling the sweatshirts, Dressler said he made almost $45,000.
Through those sweatshirt sales, Dressler also had an opportunity to meet Mark Cuban, one of the craziest moments so far in his TikTok career.
Through TikTok, Dressler became friends with Cuban’s daughter, Alexis Cuban. “She was like, ‘Oh, can you get me a sweatshirt?’ And I was like, ‘How about I send you two?’”
TikTok’s rise during COVID — and its potential fall
Cureton noticed an uptick in the TikTok usage once COVID-19 hit. “Everybody was just at the house bored,” he said.
As downloads surged, so did questions regarding the app’s cybersecurity and privacy.
TikTok made national headlines over the past few weeks after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News that the United States was considering a national ban on the popular video app.
Cureton said at first he wasn’t worried. Discussions of privacy concerns and cyber security seemed like old news. But a few days later, TikTok had a nationwide glitch, where like and view counts in the app disappeared.
“I was like, ‘Man, this really might be it,’” Cureton said. “I was trying to stay positive, but it was just hard to think that everything I had gone through up until now might be ending.”
Yet, if TikTok were to vanish, Cureton said he likes to think it wouldn’t mean much. “I like to think to myself as more than just a TikToker.”
Brown said she felt hurt hearing this announcement about a potential ban. “I know what it’s like to be a creator, and to take a lot of time and a lot of effort to create new content, and for it to be almost taken down in a heartbeat? That is soul-crushing, almost.”
In the event of a TikTok ban, Brown has already considered her plans of actions. “We have to find a solution to our problem,” she said.
Now, Brown is working toward developing her own app. She reached out to friends with experience in app creation and is now laying the groundwork.
“I haven’t really mapped out exactly what it’s going to look like or how it’s going to work, but I know that this is an app that we all need just in case we can’t hang onto TikTok forever,” Brown said.
When Dressler heard about the ban, he received a long text from his management. His first instruction: Push followers to other platforms.
Then the glitch hit. Dressler went live on the app. During his live videos, he said he normally hits around 1,000 viewers. But on that day, when the threat of a TikTok ban loomed larger than ever, 13,000 people tuned in.
Cureton and Dressler also said TikTok serves as more of a transition to more platforms and more content.
“TikTok is a gateway, and I need to figure out what it gateways me into,” Dressler said.
Dressler is looking ahead to launching a YouTube and livestreaming career. On a livestream, Dressler can go about his day normally, which he said consists of playing Xbox, while still interacting with his supporters.
While Dressler’s TikTok persona is more caustic and deadpan, he hopes that expanding to other platforms allows people to see him how he sees himself: a laid back, normal 18-year old kid.
“It’s a 15-second video,” he said. “That’s not who I am. You can’t judge who I am off of that.”
For more Charlotte TikTok celebrities, including Wynee Bermudez and Fox 46 Meteorologist Nick Kosir, check out this guide to 8 Charlotte TikTokers to follow.
This story was originally published July 30, 2020 at 1:39 PM.
