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Kim KarDASHian was … not at beauty influencer Mikayla Nogueira’s wedding, but pretty much every other online celebrity was. The creator, who has been in and out of drama for her fair-weather Boston accent and appearing to use false lashes when hawking a mascara, married husband Cody Hawken on July 1 in front of friends, family, and your entire TikTok FYP. James Charles, Chris Olsen, and Dylan Mulvaney were among the A-list influencers in attendance who wasted no time sucking out every bit of content from the celebration, which some criticized for appearing to be heavily sponsored by E.l.f Cosmetics.
“You only get married once,” Nogueira told People. “Why not have a massive party with people who love and support you?” Except, apparently, if they’re an actual, non-influencer friend, one of whom was allegedly shafted from the invite list.
Why it’s a 2: Nogueira joins titans of industry like Pentatonix’s Scott Hoying and former “Rich Kid of Instagram” Karen Shiboleth in the hallowed halls of People’s exclusive wedding photo gallery, elevating her “TikTok influencer” status to that of “side character in a Bravo reality show.”
There isn’t much video evidence of Amazon’s July 11 Prime Night, which featured creators like Alix Earle, Jake Shane, and Aliyah Bah competing in a series of games to promote the company’s annual mega-sale, and for good reason. The entire operation was a technical mess from start to finish, with awkward silences, poorly contrived games, one near incident of accidental blackface, and host Atsuko Okatsuka doing her best to hold it all together. In the most-talked-about segment, Earle sits behind Shane and uses her hands to apply makeup that she can’t see. In doing so, she grabs a contour stick, and unknowingly smears dark makeup all over his face. The rest of the story is best told by the comments that began flooding the live:
“Oh no.”
“ALIX STOP NOW”
“Jake is gonna get canceled at Amazon Prime.”
Shortly after, the live cut out. Amazon blamed this abrupt ending on “technical difficulties,” but many suspect the company pulled the plug after realizing things were going south. Two dollars off printer paper was not worth enduring that mess.
Why it’s a 2: TikTok x Amazon should have been a slam dunk. The #Amazonfinds hashtag alone has 56 billion views on the app. But Amazon royally fumbled the bag in the same month that TikTok launched its own Amazon competitor, TikTok Shop. That sound you hear is a bunch of Bytedance execs popping champagne.
At any given moment, creators on TikTok Live are ladling wood soup, playing video games, or selling wigs. It’s such a well of bizarre, uncanny-valley content that you have to be doing something extremely unique to stand out. Popping popcorn with a hair straightener and slurping while repeating “Ice cream so good, yes, yes, yes”? That’ll do it. 27-year-old Pinky Doll, real name Fedha Sinon, broke out as a viral TikTok live star for “NPC streaming,” based on the “non-playable characters” found in video games. Like an NPC, Sinon cycles through a limited number of phrases and mannerisms, which she repeats in response to digital gifts sent to her by followers. These gifts can add up to between $2,000 to $3,000 per stream.
Sinon has gained over 730,000 followers on TikTok, but it was Twitter where she really exploded. Screen recordings of her livestreams went viral on the app, to the delight — and horror — of its users.
“The internet was a mistake,” reads one reply.
Why it’s a 2: Sinon’s livestreams, which were covered by the New York Times and the Washington Post, have inspired a larger trend on the app. Other creators like Haley Kalil and Trisha Paytas have put their own spin on NPC streaming, and artist Timbaland — reportedly a top viewer of Sinon’s streams — even remixed her voice into a song.
Just as it felt like we had reached peak artist-trying-to-blow-themselves-up-on-TikTok, Flyana Boss came sprinting into frame with the actual song of the summer. The hip-hop duo, made up of Bobbi Lanea and Folayan Kunerede, has earned over one million followers on TikTok for their song “You Wish,” and more specifically, their videos lip-syncing the song while running through various locations. From the streets of Los Angeles to Disneyland to the Google offices, the pair’s videos routinely receive millions of views, and the song has been featured in almost 140,000 different posts.
Why it’s a 2: This isn’t just another fleeting TikTok song. Lanea and Kunerede’s talents earned them a write-up in Rolling Stone, over 12 million streams on Spotify, and, perhaps most telling, a spike in Google searches for “kanekalon.”
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