# /tiktok

*8/12/2025*

> Was a tiktoker about finance content. 195k followers and 50m+ views in ~2 months

- end of '21 to early '22 I was a content creator on tiktok
- grew a finance tiktok account from 0 to 195k followers and 50m+ views in <2 months
- focused heavily on content strategy: studying videos, retention, formats, storytelling, viral design, etc. basically tried memetic theory applied to tiktok
- ran a Discord server for the account with 9k members

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I had some smaller content creation success prior to this on most social medias but this one was the first one that had videos reach the mainstream.. I got into it because I was seeing lots of content in this niche on my feed and thought all of it sucked and could be done better. If I look back on my videos now 3-4 years later, they also suck and are cringe but for the time had some innovative formats and funnels that I had fun operating. The bizdev part of the business was also enjoyable; operating the background monetization and operations was like an optimization game.

The part that I initially was looking forward to the most was meeting likeminded people like myself. I thought people in this industry were also curious about video formats, finance theory, etc. Unfortunately, that did not happen much. There were interesting people, but a lot of the people in that content niche are what you'd expect from finance/crypto content creators. More of the grifty and greedy archetype who were not enjoyable people to interact with for someone who does things out of interest/curiosity. I don't even have a problem with the greed, I understand it; it was more the lack of passion that made interactions uninteresting. After my initial optimism I eventually stopped talking to others in that creator space, and just focused on my own content.

Eventually, because my passion/interest for this field had been stretched into making baity/grifty content and sometimes needing to interact with people I didn't really care for it became boring to me. On top of this you apply the status value/expectations and everyone around me IRL telling me how great this is despite my dismay. I enjoyed distribution, memetic theory, growth hacking, system/constraint optimization, etc.; I liked everything about the business but not what the business was actually producing (the content and people I met). I've gotten told I should've kept going for financial success, but I was thankfully in a position to not need to. College was starting up near this point and I got to enjoy the remainder of the last summer I had before school.

In early 2023 I got back into it for a month for two main reasons: 1) I had a friend that thought my earlier success with this was purely luck and I wanted to disprove him. 2) I wanted to see if maybe I'd enjoy the content itself this time and that things could have changed. I started posting on the account again and succeeded in disproving my friend. The second hope did not go well though, as I still found the industry grifty and cringe. I considered pivoting into a different niche or changing up content but I actually started enjoying the other projects I was working on a lot more at the time.

Since this project I haven't attempted content/distribution ventures like this and only post on social media for personal enjoyment, but this experience was extremely formative for me. Beyond just what I got good at while running the operation, I learned a lot about what I like, dislike, and schools of thought around fulfillment. It's helped me learn what I actually like doing now. Some of the stuff that I learned here around growth, distribution, and business development I still enjoy — but only in combination with the other stuff I've learned that I like! :)