🎬 TikTok 2.0 and the future of vlogging

why Paris is always a good idea

You are cordially invited to this week’s brew of High Tea, your dispatch of 🔥 internet culture served piping hot. This week: the future of vlogging with creator du jour Victoria Paris, the anti influencer making serious noise on TikTok.

Drink up! 🐸☕

p.s. if you’re not a paid subscriber, here’s what you missed from this week’s Bucks Fizz: our Thursday dispatch covering the best of TikTok’s unsigned and emerging talent.

🥂 KiNG MALA, BLÁNID & Beach Bunny

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what we’ve been sipping on

Last Sunday, you’ll remember we dove into the business of being relatable with our bae and YouTuber of the moment, Emma Chamberlain: businesswomen and creator extraordinaire. We named her 2021’s lockdown queen (yes, we did that 💅) based on her ability to serve up the simple delights of the everyday mundane via her take on the tell-all, no frills, #nofilter medium. We are, ofc, talking about the humble vlog: a well established content format that is truly having a *moment* during the panini. Why? It’s officially ~arrived~ on TikTok. 

overheard on the fyp 🐸☕️

This week creator and agency owner, Logan Welbaum (@plai.io) posted the news that TikTok is trialling three new features, and to say we’re shook is an understatement. We’ll pause here and say, although this hasn’t been announced yet by TikTok itself (despite rumors circling for some time) Logan’s info comes straight from the app's official virtual creator meetup which he attended this week – and he has the receipts to prove it 👀.  Let’s dive into the new beta features claimed to be in the works:

▶️ Playlists: Still 👀 for Part 2? With playlists you can split your videos into themed playlists means your audience never has to go searching. 

📝 Captions: +1 on accessibility

⌛️ 3 minute long videos: Now no longer just limited to 60 seconds, TikTok is opening up its prime real estate to longer form creators looking to share content that might otherwise be housed on YouTube alone. 

why longer form is an interesting move for TikTok

You’ll have heard, “TikTok is the new YouTube” being brandished about as of late and as curators of the tea (🐸 ☕️) it would be unwell of us not to comment on this presumptuous take. Where best to start than to showcase a creator achieving substantial growth on the platform with their novel takes on vlogging, which we think, coupled with the news of the three minute video limit, represents a seismic shift in the way TikTok can start to harness the power of long form to complement its already robust short form content creation and distribution engine. Buckle up pals, we’re off to NYC. 

the future of daily vlogging: Victoria Paris

Alice Ophelia @iamaliceophelia

victoria paris is the moment

Victoria Paris is the moment. And you can quote us on that. If some of you are scratching your heads and thinking...who?!...we’ll allow you for a hot sec, because 4 months ago @victoriaparisf, the TikTok star in the making, did not exist. From 0 to 800,000 followers in the space of 4 months, we’re here to tell you that it pays to pay attention – blink and Victoria will be celebrating the 5 million follower milestone with an Emma Chamberlain collab (you can quote us on that too). Started from the bottom now we’re here? Let’s dive into Victoria’s secret sauce: content, chaos and no filter creatorship.

👀 Two weeks in the life of Victoria Paris: daily follower growth on TikTok, via Social Blade

Victoria started her TikTok “on a whim” as a way to drive traffic to her depop store and, after gaining some traction on the platform, decided to pivot her content to an average of 30 daily uploads of her life as a twentysomething in NYC. If this is a conversation about work ethic in the age of the creator economy, you’ve found Gen Z’s embodiment in Victoria; often uploading multiple times an hour, leaving no stone unturned. Scrolling through Victoria’s TikTok is a true day in the life of a 22-year-old multi-hyphenate, navigating her experiences of everything from balancing school work to an unfaltering workout routine and mischievous adventures in the city with Suede Brooks, her co-collaborator in crime. 

Via @victoriaparisf on TikTok

In any given 24 hours, Victoria invites us to come along and experience a day in her life: sometimes it’s a quick run to the deli for a bagel, or picking out a thrifted fit for dinner or pep talk, almost always delivered from the stair climber at Equinox. Victoria picks up her camera (aka iPhone) from the minute she wakes up to the minute she goes to sleep, from a tutorial for her signature blue agave iced coffee, to waking up on her floor at 5am with a hangover from the previous night’s well-documented activities. 

TL;DR Victoria Paris is the future of daily vlogging. She’s pioneered her own unapologetic, unfiltered and uncompromising style of content creation on a saturated platform known for its stylized and choreographed trends. But Victoria doesn’t need a soundtrack or a dance routine to maintain her relevancy, which is cultivated in bite-size chunks and delivered in 60 second portions. Victoria has succeeded in making the everyday look extraordinary - not through gimmicks, good lighting and clickbait – but through elevating the experience and engaging her audience at every step of the way. 

Community is key: the comments section of a typical Victoria Paris TikTok 

Victoria’s genuine commitment to her blossoming community might help explain why she’s been gaining ~16,000 new TikTok followers each day over the past month, as well as *wait for it* an average of 1.1 million likes...on TikTok...per day. Victoria’s comment section reads like a massive group chat with self-proclaimed fans (“Victorians”, fyi), often with eagle-eyed viewers leaving questions for their “bestie” that are used to inform future content thanks to TikTok’s brilliant Q&A function. 

Unlike other prominent figures across the current influencer landscape, Victoria operates as the almost ‘anti-influencer’ of sorts; giving us VIP access to her life in all its delightfully chaotic and messy glory. We get to ride shotgun through an open terrain free from hashtags and filters with transparency at every turn. It’s bestie vibes only for Victoria Paris. 

Oh and in case you were wondering? Her depop store is a total sell out – naturally.

With 3 minute long videos on the horizon, we think TikTok’s flirtation with long form content will only help propel Victoria even further into the spotlight. With vlogging no longer stuck within the confines of YouTube, nor needing the heavy editing in Premiere Pro, creators like Victoria will be able to offer fans a mixture of transition-heavy hot takes and short skits mixed with the more in-depth, stream of consciousness content Gen Z crave, all in one app. If you’re talking about capturing mind-share online folks, this is surely it. 

📈 TikTok followers: 843K

▶️YouTube subscribers: 32.7K

❤️ IG Followers: 181K 

🎬 Average upload: 30-50 TikToks per day.

🤩 Audience growth in 30 days: +480K

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Okay you made it, now you go out and enjoy the weather with inspo from High Tea favorite, Max Balegde – you’re welcome. 

ttyl,

Alice & Faye