Will the viral success of the ‘Who TF Did I Marry’ TikTok saga usher in a new age of social media?

This month something unthinkable happened online. An app that famously killed this generation’s attention span by promoting 15 second, hyper-stimulating content delivered an eight hour-long saga to the world’s For You Page — with practically everyone tuning into Reesa Teesa’s 50-part TV-worthy drama.

Despite each video in the “Who TF Did I Marry” being 10 minutes long nearly every one of them has been viewed to completion over a million times. So too have (shorter) posts of people performing mundane tasks totally enthralled by the epic in the background. And even those scared by the hours-long commitment are devouring five-minute recap videos by obsessive fans.

To be fair, it’s a hell of a story. At its crux is a chronological firsthand account of Reesa’s marriage and divorce from a man she calls Legion (like the group of demons in the Bible). What unfolds is a love scam story — think Tinder Swindler, but with fewer private jets, where her now ex-husband lied about being the VP of a condiment company (he was, in fact, a temporary forklift operator), phoning his brother every morning (actually, he was talking to himself) and family members dying of Covid (they were either alive, or had died years before, or didn’t even exist in the first place).

It’s been called TikTok’s first prestige drama, and has already drawn comparison to stripper Aziah “Zola” Wells’ 148-tweet thread about an ill-fated road trip to Tampa with a new friend that went viral in 2015. Considering that story was made in an A24 film starring Riley Keough and Taylour Paige, it’s almost certain that a Netflix remake is being finalised as we speak.

What it’s also done — and for the first time ever — is potentially birth a whole new genre of content creation on TikTok. Having successfully hacked the attention economy with a formula not yet seen on TikTok — one that many thought the platform itself had upended — will other creators rush to emulate Reesa’s viral long-form success?

“Companionship content — the type that feels like you’re on facetime with a friend, has been on the rise and this is a great example of how to execute it away from a livestream,” says Tyla Grant, senior strategist at creative strategy studio MØRNING“We live for drama and gossip, Reesa’s story had a season finale [that she revealed in her Introduction and Disclaimer precursor] and you knew from the beginning what the ending would be. The focus was on ‘how do we get there’ not ‘where are we going.’”

Also on the rise: oversharing and trauma dumping, with their hashtags garnering 312 million and 68.8 million views respectively — making Reesa’s storytelling a trifecta of algorithmic catnip.

The signs of a shift in the kind (and length) of content that users were seeking out on TikTok have been here for a while. Whether it’s “come back for part three” storytelling, whole movies being uploaded to the platform part-by-part, or the arrival of the 10 minute TikTok feature, the infrastructure has been primed for a Reesa-like takeover.

“Platforms start with features which proliferate over time (remember Instagram just used to be pictures and captions?), and as they do it opens realms to new ways of posting which will be discovered and dictated by users on the platform,” says Emily Chapps, digital lead at MØRNING. “Then as posting styles arrive, trend, die and change, it will be on the platforms to support or reign these behaviours depending on what they want, which 9/10 times is stickiness, so if a posting style keeps people scrolling then it will likely be reinforced.”

“TikTok themselves have even said that this is the year of ‘creative bravery’,” adds Grant. This has been billed as a “blend of curiosity, imagination, vulnerability and courage” — which is something that Reesa’s series successfully tapped into.

“When you unpack the components that make this series successful, it’s a creative reinterpretation of everything we know to be true. Both YouTube and TikTok are vying for TV viewership, and longer watch sessions — this is a great example of how future successful creators can create content that meets the platforms desires in a lo-fi way.”

TikTok has been primed for a Reesa Teesa takeover (PA Wire)

With the monstrous success of Reesa’s 50-part series, which has proved its ‘stickiness’ — and then some, both Chapps and Grant believe that many creators will try to emulate this format. Especially as many have theorised that Reesa has earned hundreds of thousands from TikTok’s creators fund, which offers creators a way to monetise content that performs well.

Originally set up in 2020 as a $1 billion pot to be paid out over the course of three years to those making viral content, complaints of low payouts (as in, just a few dollars for millions of views) led to the introduction of a new monetisation method called the Creativity Program. Here videos longer than a minute and posted by creators with over 10,000 followers are eligible for higher payments levied against views and other engagement metrics. According to a TikTok spokesperson in a press release, creators are able to earn 20 times the amount they were making under the original fund, however, many have complained of the red tape and hoops around the money — including Reesa herself.

“Wanted to come on here and tell you guys the stories about the amount of money that I’ve made on TikTok with this whole ‘Who TF Did I Marry?’ series is wildly inaccurate,” she explained in a recent post, revealing that the series was started before being part of the creator fund. “I didn’t get approved [for the creator fund] until midway into the series… so all the videos I did beforehand weren’t even counted for the creator fund… For the next 30 days, I am not making any money from the videos. I am merely making these videos from the heart,” she concluded, explaining that as she re-uploaded the majority of the videos they are no longer eligible for the Creativity Program fund. “So for the people who think I’ve made 80-something-thousand, a hundred thousand, three hundred thousand — I am so sorry to disappoint you but the actual number is nowhere near. I am not quitting my day job.”

Still, according to the internet she’s been gifted a BMW, which was the car Legion promised to buy her, as well as trips to London and Paris (the two cities she’s been wanting to visit since her marriage) from Delta and Hilton. Having also gained over three million followers since Valentine’s Day (which is when she dropped the infamous part 1 video that kick started this whole thing) Reesa is TikTok’s latest break out star — and with that comes all the perks of influencer-dom.

Although many have argued that the series could have been a Serial-style Podcast, Grant argues otherwise. “In another world this could have been a podcast limited series struggling to get 100s listens but the network effect of TikTok as well as the FYP helped with its discoverability resulting in its virality,” she explains on the new social media frameworks that are continually disrupting traditional media outlets, adding that: “Its spread, love and cultural impact feels a lot like a 2024 version of Keisha the Sket, on a global scale.”

However, it’s worth noting that in both of these comparisons (and in ‘Who TF Did I Marry’ itself) the viral success was rooted in one thing: it was a surreal story, being told by an incredibly strong storyteller. Maybe Reesa has birthed a new genre, but only the boldest and best will be able to take advantage.

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