“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 series 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 gradual; they received’t want me,’ After all, they known 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 seems to be 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 obtained known as into work.” When she picked up her cellphone a couple of hours later, “the video had simply fully blown up,” she says. “The views had been within the thousands and thousands already. It was terrifying.”
It’s laborious to say precisely why and the way the video picked up such momentum so shortly; 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 1000’s. So what did she do subsequent? Completely nothing. “I did not publish for a complete week,” she says. “I used to be scared.”
As a substitute, Fang determined to let her account “marinate somewhat” and per week later—impressed by the truth that lots of the feedback on the earlier video had been about how flawless her make-up regarded whilst she cried—she posted a magnificence tutorial. The remainder is historical past: “After that, I did a prepare with me each single day earlier than college,” says Fang.
By “college” she means highschool—Fang was a senior on the time. She had already utilized to school and selected her main—journalism—earlier than her TikTok following instantly ballooned. She signed on with a expertise administration firm (United Expertise Company) in June, and headed to school (the College of Victoria) that summer season.
She lived in a dorm on campus for her first semester, however discovered it troublesome to regulate to the slower tempo of life on Vancouver Island. “As a result of I am such a metropolis woman, transferring to an island… I imply it was a stunning island, do not get me mistaken,” says Fang. “But when I wasn’t in school, I used to be simply in my dorm.” Or the mailroom: Fang says she used to should borrow a dolly to cart her PR packages—packing containers full of magnificence merchandise that manufacturers hoped she would characteristic in a video—from the mailroom to her dorm room every day.
