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Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guides to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more
TikTok’s new “debt payoff” trend has creators posting videos to crowdsource themselves.
Thousands of videos have been uploaded to the platform in order to be eligible to receive funding from the Creator Rewards Program. Business InsiderCreators who join the program must meet the requirements of having at least 10,000 followers and receiving at least 100,000 views within the past month.
“They’re banding together against TikTok, which is a big company,” Viral Marketing Stars CEO Katya Varbanova explained to the outlet. “TikTok is a multi-billion dollar company. Let’s take their money.”
The trend went mainstream after creator and medical student Jake Heisenberg made headlines by figuring out how to game the Creators Program system. In his video, which has been viewed more than 22 million times, he shared his findings with other TikTok users.
“So I did the math and apparently for TikTok to pay off my student loans in one go, they need 247 million people to watch this video for five seconds,” he explained, adding that the video needed to be at least a minute long to raise the money. The rest of the video showed him eating a bowl of cereal.
Videos like Heisenberg’s see viewers banding together to comment en masse under the “pay off your debt” clip, generating engagement that promotes the video on the platform and increases views.
“You can’t do this on Instagram, Facebook or YouTube,” Varbanova noted, adding that TikTok is essentially like GoFundMe, “except the currency is attention, not money.”
“This is something that only TikTok can do, thanks to our proprietary algorithm,” she continued, “prioritizing videos that groups have proven to watch all the way through.”
In the end, Heisenberg’s gamble paid off, but not in the way he’d hoped. A few days later, he revealed to his eager viewers that he’d only made $4,200. He had previously revealed that his student loan debt was in the “low six figures.”
While the figure was “lower than expected,” he explained that the amount paid by platforms is determined by two factors: “eligible views” and “RPM (revenue per thousand views).”
“That’s more than I made per video in two months in my previous job,” he continued, expressing gratitude for what he called a “life-changing amount.”
He added, “Words cannot express how incredible it is that this happened to me and how grateful I am.”
As the US reaches its cost of living crisis height and average household debt reportedly hits an all-time high, people are getting creative and using tools like TikTok to make money.
