“It’s loopy to suppose u began all this with posting a video the place you didn’t need to go to work,” chimed in one other. It’s true: On January 28, 2023, Fang was on name for her job as a hostess at a sequence restaurant in Vancouver. “I used to be having a nasty day. However I used to be like, ‘Okay, it’s wet. They’re positively actually sluggish; they received’t want me,’ After all, they referred to as,” she says. “I used to be bawling my eyes out as I used to be preparing, and once I noticed myself within the mirror I used to be like, ‘Wow, this appears so ridiculous.’” So, as youngsters do, she determined to doc it.
Earlier than Fang began her shift, she posted a sped-up, two-and-a-half-minute model of the 15-minute video on TikTok and added the textual content: “POV: I received referred to as into work.” When she picked up her telephone a couple of hours later, “the video had simply fully blown up,” she says. “The views have been within the tens of millions already. It was terrifying.”
It’s exhausting to say precisely why and the way the video picked up such momentum so rapidly; the TikTok algorithm works in mysterious methods. In any case, due to that video (which, as of this second, has north of 40 million views), Fang’s follower rely jumped from someplace within the a whole lot to someplace within the hundreds. So what did she do subsequent? Completely nothing. “I did not put up for an entire week,” she says. “I used to be scared.”
As a substitute, Fang determined to let her account “marinate a little bit” and every week later—impressed by the truth that most of the feedback on the earlier video have been about how flawless her make-up appeared whilst she cried—she posted a magnificence tutorial. The remaining is historical past: “After that, I did a prepare with me each single day earlier than faculty,” says Fang.
By “faculty” she means highschool—Fang was a senior on the time. She had already utilized to varsity and selected her main—journalism—earlier than her TikTok following abruptly ballooned. She signed on with a expertise administration firm (United Expertise Company) in June, and headed to varsity (the College of Victoria) that summer time.
She lived in a dorm on campus for her first semester, however discovered it tough to regulate to the slower tempo of life on Vancouver Island. “As a result of I am such a metropolis lady, shifting to an island… I imply it was a beautiful island, do not get me mistaken,” says Fang. “But when I wasn’t at school, I used to be simply in my dorm.” Or the mailroom: Fang says she used to must borrow a dolly to cart her PR packages—bins stuffed with magnificence merchandise that manufacturers hoped she would characteristic in a video—from the mailroom to her dorm room every day.
