TikTok

“It's brought a lot of people a lot of joy,” says Serena Shahidi. “But I also see the way young people interact in day-to-day life and how TikTok has shaped their personalities and it does concern me.”

They're the inevitable result of our complex, guilty relationship with social media: TikTok stars using the platform to argue against consumerism.

“I used to need a debilitating amount of benzodiazepines to go into a grocery store,” says a TikTok creator who refuses to fully embrace healthy living. “And now I'm supposed to wash my produce with baking soda for 15 minutes?”

A wave of content creators has made abstinence a core part of their online identity—and some of them are continuing to share when things go off the rails.

Who are these divas? Pledges like Ben Faber, who says, “It’s just to have some fun while we're doing this and get closer with the guys you’re making TikToks with.”

You may know him from TikTok as the “Luckily, I have purse” guy or his podcast with Brooke Averick (“AI could never do the dumb, dumb conversations that we have”). But more and more people are catching Wood at his sold-out stand-up shows.

A self-described “rich kid” from Manhattan who’s known online for his viral crowd work clips, Zelnick is actually building his career the old-fashioned way: Performing in American cities like Plano, Texas, for lefty young people and “eight 64-year-old Republicans sitting in the back, having a straight-up bad time.”

How TikTok turned an old word connoting reserve and modesty into the "very mindful" neologism of the moment.

“This whole aura generation we’re in, everything’s about looking cool,” explains one viral TikTok star.

Ahead of a sold-out hometown show, the high school pals turned TikTok sensations talk to GQ about cracking the algorithm, riding CitiBikes with Ed Sheeran, and why “the longer people don’t know we make music, the better.”

“I've got DMs on Instagram like, ‘Bro, you need to teach us how to bareback flights,’” says a pioneer of the swashbuckling trend.

Or, how young people learned to stop worrying and love mass-produced subcultural merch—even if they can’t name three Nirvana songs.

The comedian behind viral video tours of men’s shockingly messy living spaces describes the wildest thing she ever saw in a room and the most important thing a guy can do to avoid repelling his visitors.

“Everything boils back down to the point of somehow feeling defective or not enough,” says the TikTok and podcast personality, who launched a live nationwide tour this month.

“People meet me, they don’t think I'm a real person,” says the TikTok star. “They think there’s no way a guy can be this positive.”

William Conrad quit his tech job to cook, clean, and serve as the “seamstress” for his girlfriend. One fan describes his soothing TikToks about their lifestyle as “lobotomy-core.”