The business of being Victoria Paris

"I watch the data all day long… I see every uptick or downtick. I put a video out, I watch how it trends. And then I'll make another video and see if that trends similarly." Then, she privates the videos that don't do well. She estimates she's made more than 20,000 TikToks, only a third of which are still public.

When she was laid off from her role at a fintech startup in the pandemic panic of early 2020, Paris doubled down on driving traffic to her DePop store to make money. She saw TikTok as an untapped fount of opportunity, and made creating videos for it her full-time job. She posted dozens of times a day, drawing viewers in with her stream-of-conscious... See more

The perceived mediocrity of her content, and its subsequent success despite that, was dubbed the "Victoria Paris Effect" by the Embedded Substack. She's had advantages others don't: her college education, pandemic timing, and the fact that "so  many  massive creators are thin and white," she says. "That is never something that's not alway... See more

Paris is not in pursuit of perfection. "Most of my shit's bad," she laughs, "I'm not trying to act like I'm some savant, like this is some fucking Picasso shit." She points to her friend, prolific YouTuber and filmmaker Casey Neistat. "He's like 'I won't put anything out there they don't think is amazing and I don't give a fuck how people receive i... See more