The TikTok Celebrity: From Movie Star to Microinfluencer

The title celebrity used to feel incredibly distant and unattainable. You either had it, or you didn’t. It was reserved for movie stars, pop idols, runway models, and people so polished they barely felt real. TikTok changed that completely, where achieving fame no longer feels like reserved VIP seats for the extraordinary; it has opened up the title's access, visibility, repetition, and relatability. The result isn’t one dominant celebrity culture, it’s hundreds of smaller ones.

TikTok doesn’t just create celebrities; it fragments them.

The algorithm doesn’t care about elitism or experience; it rewards attention. Essentially, the more views a video gets, the more the For You Page will pick it up. This initiates a cycle in which views generate more views, and what controls the accumulation of these views is the attention economy. 

As a result, TikTok allows for a culture in which people who film in their bedroom can command the same cultural relevance as someone on a red carpet. This is how influencers like Charli D'Amelio gained virality—by making videos of her doing simple TikTok dances in her room— and how Emma Chamberlain gained internet fame as a teenage vlogger—by talking to the camera while driving in her car in the Bay Area or making coffee. In the attention economy, users crave the content of ordinary creators whom they can relate to. Because TikTok appeals to users' diverse viewing habits and interests, it’s easier for different types of creators to gain fame and achieve celebrity status on the platform.

TikTok rewards people who are relatable and able to hold engagement, not just impressions. In the attention economy, visibility can often matter more than talent. And because people’s interests are niche, fame is increasingly moving sideways instead of upward—fame on TikTok is dispersed across many different subcultures of audiences, rather than concentrated in a single place.

Imitation plays a significant role in this. In order to function as an app, TikTok depends on repetition, whether it’s through trends, sounds, or dueting videos. Repetition attracts engagement and sticks in people’s minds. Copying isn’t something that is looked down upon or discouraged because it allows more content to be posted and expands the app. Creators gain views by appearing familiar while also including enough personality to feel authentic. TikTok encourages a balance between imitation and authenticity: relying solely on imitation without adding anything doesn’t allow creators to stand out as genuine and worth following, while too much originality can risk making them invisible to the algorithm. The sweet spot is somewhere in between.

Olivia Rodrigo is an example of someone who masters this. When she released “drivers license,” she leaned into imitation to promote the song through posting casually, and openly, explaining where the song came from, and using platform tools like green screens and trending app features. This virality was furthered by fans participating in imitation, allowing for promotion and more sound uses/streams, whether intentional or not. 

Not only do artists and famous influencers like Rodrigo imitate celebrities, but fans also participate in the cycle. A wide variety of famous influencers, micro influencers, and regular users participated in the “driver's license challenge,” giving Rodrigo more attention, as well as Mel Sommers, a regular user who vent viral as the creator of the challenge. This shows that social capital also plays a role in virality and how the algorithm chooses to push videos. TikTok’s imitative culture contributes to fragmentation, showing that fame isn’t just about the original source or creator of viral content, but also about the thousands or millions of people who participate in it and become viral from it as well.

Circulation is key. On TikTok, fame isn’t possessed by the original creator alone. It’s shared amongst everyone who decides to participate in it. Viral moments belong as much to the people repeating them as to the person who started them. That’s why micro-celebrities often emerge out of trends, not just by making their own unique videos. TikTok rewards those who know how to perform, utilize, and adopt the app's features the most successfully.

And increasingly, that performance is monetized.

TikTok encourages users to turn themselves into brands through consistency. Creators build recognizable identities within niche subcultures, also known as “sides” of TikTok. BookTok, LGBTQ+ TikTok, gamer, and wellness TikTok are examples of these sides. Instead of having mass appeal, TikTok communities operate in their own bubbles directed to specific target audiences, thus allowing more room for microinfluencers to be known within those groups. Fame becomes smaller, more targeted, and often more profitable.

Monetization no longer requires universal recognition. TikTok Shop, affiliate links, and brand partnerships all reward creators with loyal niche followings rather than massive platforms. Everyday routines become content, and the self becomes the product.

While some of these self-brands are harmless, there are also some that are deeply concerning. Belle Gibson, who notably pretended that her lifestyle choices cured her terminal brain cancer, was exposed to have wrongfully faked having cancer, shocking many. While her behavior was profoundly immoral, she was nonetheless able to effectively self-brand. A similar example of self-branding over a false narrative involves Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who was imprisoned after second-degree murdering her mother in response to her mother’s faking Gypsy Rose’s illnesses online. Gypsy Rose’s post-incarceration popularity, where she posts consistent updates wrapped around her sentence, shows how self-branding can even turn traumatic or involuntary branded identities into something for the public eye to be invested in. This extreme example demonstrates that self-branding exists beyond regular lifestyle influencers and within hyper-specific communities. 

It is clear that TikTok has irrevocably altered the understanding of a celebrity by authorizing easier entry to fame, expanding microcelebrity culture, promoting imitation, and commodifying creators through self-branding. This shift has further fragmented and diversified the pool of celebrities. By privileging views versus elitism, imitation versus originality, and niche branding versus mass targeting, TikTok has altered both how fame is achieved and what it means to audiences. TikTok is less about the individual and more about how effectively creators use the platform and occupy their audience’s minds, revealing the true power that attention possesses.