TikTok’s newest viral famous person is Reesa Teesa, a Georgia girl who posted 50 movies — just below 10 minutes lengthy apiece — chronicling her tumultuous relationship together with her ex-husband. That’s over six hours of content material, all a couple of stranger’s expertise residing with a compulsive liar. However thousands and thousands of viewers are consuming it up, clinging to Reesa’s each final phrase on a platform with a repute for ruining our consideration span.
I can’t go for a stroll with out headphones (lest I be alone with my very own ideas), so I’m continually listening to podcasts and audiobooks. However Reesa’s movies marked the primary time that I went for a stroll whereas listening to TikToks, my telephone tucked away in my pocket. And apparently, that’s what the storyteller supposed.
“The collection, ‘who the f— did I marry,’ will not be one thing that you must sit down and maintain your telephone and watch,” Reesa mentioned in a TikTok on Wednesday. “I did it the best way I did it in order that approach, you really can take heed to it as an audiobook, chapter by chapter, so as.”
This format may be unconventional, however it’s working. Even by TikTok’s requirements, Reesa’s rise is meteoric. She had 50,000 followers on Friday; now, lower than per week later, she’s about to hit 2 million. And Google Traits says that “who tf did i marry” is the most-searched merchandise associated to marriage this week.
TikTok inherently calls for our consideration. You possibly can’t watch TikToks picture-in-picture in your telephone, and on the For You web page, the identical video will play again and again till you scroll to the subsequent one, so you must manually swipe to see extra content material. However Reesa is benefiting from TikTok’s playlist characteristic, which transitions from one video to the subsequent so as.
“I let all 50 components play whereas I used to be washing dishes, cooking, every thing,” one commenter wrote on TikTok. “My son was like, half 38, you continue to watching the woman??”
Confessional, diaristic movies have been standard because the early days of YouTube. However the style has developed from bed room vlogs into story time TikToks, which are sometimes filmed within the automobile — a impartial, quiet place with good lighting. Normally, although, these sorts of vlogs are posted in actual time as diary entires, and subscribers tune in and catch up when a brand new video is posted. However Reesa posted her 50 movies all throughout the span of some days, speaking about an expertise she had a few years in the past, giving her a bit extra time to course of the occasions. We see her in numerous phases all through her day: She drives to work with hair curlers in, data some extra movies together with her hair and make-up performed, then goes dwelling to inform extra of the story in her pajamas. It’s a dual-sided memoir: She’s speaking concerning the previous, calmly, constantly and in chronological order, however the movies themselves present us her current, as she’s going about her day-to-day life.
After we watch Reesa do mundane issues in her TikTok “audiobook,” she subtly indicators to us that irrespective of how dangerous issues obtained together with her ex-husband, she’s nonetheless standing.
