Fidan Shevket doesn’t want you to worry about it
Fidan Shevket doesn’t want you to worry about it
The Australian personality's TikTok is a much-needed reprieve
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.
I’m trying, Fidan, I’m trying! —Kate
I don’t know about you, but there’s nothing I want more these days than to disassociate for ten minutes and, say, watch someone chop up a salad.
Not just anyone. The chef in question is Fidan Shevket, a 45-year-old lawyer from Australia who has over 583,000 TikTok followers—not bad for someone who, before this, hardly had any social media at all. While she originally joined TikTok in hopes of attracting new clients to her family law firm, it was her everyday life videos that made people stick around. There’s a very strict routine: at lunch, she makes a salad. On Fridays, she orders take-out. And Saturdays? Well, that’s Platter Day—when dinner is a smorgasbord of fruits and vegetables and snacks and dips, because “we don’t fucking cook on Saturday nights.”
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Shevket has a lot of catch phrases, the main one being, “Don’t worry about it.” This phrase is peppered throughout her sometimes ten-minute-long videos, filmed in real time while Shevket chats about life. “I actually, weirdly needed this,” one comment reads. “I’m here for the calm tone,” writes another. “I stay for the ‘don’t worry about it.’”
“I get a lot of messages, heaps of messages, from people saying how much joy they get from my videos,” Shevket tells me over a video call. “How they're anxious by nature and just me saying ‘don't worry about it’ calms their anxiety.”
That’s the energy I felt we needed today. Read our interview, scroll Shevket’s videos—and whatever it is, try not to worry about it.
How did you get started on TikTok?
It took a while for it to take off. When you've only got a couple of hundred followers, you're putting all this time into it, and yet there's no comments, there's no likes. Nobody's listening. And I thought, I needed something to get people hooked. A couple years earlier, I was on a television show in Australia that got people from around Sydney who had prenuptial agreements. And because I'm a divorce lawyer with a prenuptial agreement, I was like a great person to have for the audience. So they asked if I'd like to come on and I said, yeah, sure. Why not? A bit of publicity for the firm.
So I did that. It was a two hour recording. And then when it aired on television, the whole two hours was condensed to 45 minutes. And I was the star. All the stuff that I said, some of it was quite funny and controversial, which I didn't appreciate at the time. It's just my quirky personality. For example, I told this story about how my partner at the time, who is my current partner, would come over to my house and I'd be like, “You can't leave your stuff here. You can't leave your toothbrush, pack up your toothbrush, pack up your bag. You can't leave that here because I don't want you saying that we're living together.” I was very, very brutal about that stuff. And if he did anything around my house, I was very strict about it not being a contribution and I'm paying for it. You're gonna fix my internet, I'm gonna pay you as the internet man. And one other thing I said was the prenup has my Tupperware. You know, I've been accumulating that Tupperware for 20 years. I don't want anybody coming in taking my Tupperware. So the Daily Mail and other news outlets, "She wants the Tupperware"; "Prenup: keep the Tupperware." So I was like the Tupperware lady.
I remembered that I had that footage. So I went back and took the excerpts from the TV show and then posted it on my TikTok and because it was like a 45 minute show, I had so much content. So I was just posting that, just the clips, nothing else. And I put little commentary about that. "Can't believe I said that," that sort of stuff.
That was what got me the followers. And then I've just gradually grown it, adding in other content, stuff about being a twin mum, shopping, cooking, the law stuff is kind of now on the back burner because I've got so much work from it that I just can't take on any more clients. I can't handle it. So I sort of backburnered the law stuff a little bit, and occasionally about once a month I'll do a legal story because people like that content.
Oh my gosh. I had no idea about all that lore. Were you a consumer of TikTok before you joined?
No. Not on Twitter, not on Instagram, nothing. All I had was LinkedIn and Facebook. And on Facebook, there was a guy that I was friends with who I used to work with and he would post his TikToks on Facebook and he would tell legal stories and I would watch them on Facebook and think, “Who's listening to this story? This is a boring story. This is a story about shareholder disputes.” And I'm like, “I've got great stories. I've got relationship stories, breakup stories”. So I'm like, let me see this TikTok thing. So I downloaded the app and basically just pushed “record.” I don't do any editing. I literally push “record” and then push “stop.” I might write a caption. Sometimes I can add music. It's all very basic.
Food is a big part of your content now, there’s Platter Day and then the salads at your desk. When did you start exploring that?
The salad is kind of weird, 'cause that was just normal. I didn't think it was content. I didn't record it for years. So what made me do it, I don't know, I think I didn't have anything to post. And this is like three weeks ago, so before that I was hovering around 270,000 followers for a very long time. It was the Australian audience that had found me and liked me, and that was kind of it. And then I posted that salad video, the first one, and for some reason that did really well. On the Wednesday I did that, and then on the Friday I did another salad. And I'm just babbling on about something. It's not scripted. I don't have any notes. I just talk about whatever I'm feeling like saying. And that video is my most successful video. Something like seven or 8 million views and a million likes. My followers just spiked and people were saying, “Oh you're so soothing. I like your voice. And I like how you say ‘salad.’”
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That was actually one of my questions was—you hadn't been told you were soothing before?
No. And I still, when I listen, I don't really understand it. I'll just talk about whatever comes to mind in a slow sort of voice. And a lot of it's just chopping 'cause I've got nothing to say. And people were saying in the comments, “I can't believe I stayed for the whole 10 minutes.” And now people are doing their own salad videos. I'm getting tagged in videos. “Thank you so much. I'm making more salads now. I feel healthier. I'm going to work with the salad ingredients this morning.” And I think it's great.
You jumped from a concentrated Australian audience to now this huge one. What was that like? And do you have a sense of who your community is now?
Well the vast majority is female. I'd say it's probably 90% female and a lot of younger law student type people who feel like you can't have it all, the career and the family. But you can. And so people like someone to aspire to, to say, “Well, this person did it.” I'm a partner in the law firm, which is hard to do as a female, and I've still got a family. I like to think I'm down to earth. I'm not the sort of snobby conservative precious lawyer that you sometimes associate with the law.
And you've got your own catch phrase, "Don't worry about it." Is that another thing you only realized through TikTok that you say a lot?
Yeah. It's funny because if I didn't have the account, I wouldn't be aware of how much I say that. And I'm so conscious of saying it now. So I'll say to a client, you know, “don't worry.” And I say to myself, “Oh, God.” I'm conscious now when I say it, but it was just the way I speak.
Was TikTok an effective tool for getting you clients?
Absolutely. And I think it's the personal relationship you have where people are sitting in their bed watching you on TikTok and they feel like they know you. And because of that personal relationship, it's a trusted relationship. I feel like I could trust you with my family law case. And I get a lot of referrals. So even if people aren't on TikTok, people who know someone, they'll be like, “Oh, you should go to Fidan because I saw her on TikTok and she knows about family violence or knows about spousal maintenance” or whatever it is, because somebody else watched it.
The content you do is not as much law related anymore. I've noticed you stick to a theme, like it's like Platter Day or desk salad or twin parenting. Did you sit down and decide like, here's what I'm going to share and I'm not gonna share?
No, a lot of it is real. It's not for TikTok. So the Platter Day thing is real. I literally did that anyway. I just thought it would be fun to let people know that I do Platter Day on a Saturday, the grocery shopping on a Sunday, take-away on a Friday. I'm very routine like that.
And then even though sort of this is just a companion to your work, now that you've grown as a creator, have you gotten any fun influencer-y opportunities from this?
I have lots of PR stuff people send me. It's nice to get things, but it gets a little bit overwhelming at times. And I do get offers of sponsorship and stuff, but it has to be on brand. A lot of stuff is girly stuff like hair and makeup and nails, and that's just not my channel. No one's gonna believe it. I've done two paid sponsorships since I've been on TikTok for just over two years. One of them was Bethenny Frankel, when she came to Australia [for a series of talks] and they asked me to help promote it. They gave me VIP tickets and stuff. And the other one was about saving water, which is something that I do believe in.
Your work plate is full, you have all these followers. Do you have any thoughts of what you want to with your platform, or are you just seeing what comes your way?
Yeah, I think that's it. TikTok, I guess it has changed my life a little bit because I'm always on my phone, but it's fun. I have a very serious job. It's very intense all of the time. And so it's something that's a bit of a break from my day. And when I need a break, I will literally go on my TikTok and have a look at the comments and the likes and scroll for a little bit and put it down and then get back to work. So it's a nice distraction I find. It brings me joy and it's fun. Whilst it remains fun, I will continue to do it.