The Confusing State of Microcelebrity, From Someone Who's Living It

With great (TikTok) power comes great (TikTok) responsibility. But...is that necessarily a good thing?

- LENA WILSON

I always thought my dog Neil would be famous long before I was (he's my pride and joy, hence my username, @NeilsMom). But after harnessing my 2020 quarantine boredom into TikTok videos about my houseplants, my thoughts on the cultural discourse du jour, and most virally my movie reviews, I quickly found myself with tens of thousands of followers. The number now sits just over 127,000.

My content has been described (by a reliable source, my twin brother's best friend) as "extremely niche, borderline arcane, and completely unapologetic." They're right that I'm confident in my opinions (here's one: the new Dune is so boring, I had to go to the bathroom during it just to have something to do). And as a film critic by trade, I have the institutional prestige to back them up. I'm guessing it's this odd concoction of professional clout and accessible megaphone that's catapulted me into the internet's new fame frontier: microcelebrity.

I want to underscore the "micro" here, because my follower count pales in comparison to the hundreds of millions who follow TikTok's most popular people. Although 127,000 is about 11,000 more than the entire population of my hometown of Clearwater, Florida. I mean, I'm hardly a household name, but if someone mentions "that lesbian film critic on TikTok," there's a good chance they're talking about me.

Recently, a company asked me to make sponsored content for HBO Max. Some guy over at Cameo keeps trying to get me to sell personalized videos of myself. I haven't taken either offer, but still I have influence. And that's kind of great. A couple of times a month, I get to feel like I'm the king of my phone screen. I recently cleaned my apartment, and a few thousand people affirmed that labor with a Like.