Welcome to Embedded, your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, published Monday through Friday by Kate Lindsay and Nick Catucci. “Get Embedded” on Twitter and Instagram. 🧩
I know this week is supposed to be me shitposting, but if I don’t write about Kate Glavan now, by tomorrow you’ll probably have discovered her yourself. —Kate
Kate Glavan has already made a video asking people to stop comparing her to Victoria Paris—which is fair, they’re two totally different people and their TikTok accounts are about totally different things. But I hope she’ll forgive me for pointing out that their rises on TikTok feel exactly the same.
My introduction to Paris was due to her persistent appearance on my For You page. It felt like TikTok had chosen her as the brunette of the moment and was doing everything in its power to make her the next big TikTokker. It didn’t take long for her to hit one million followers and become fully embedded in the app’s culture.
I’m now watching the same thing happen with Glavan. The 22-year-old NYC grad currently has 11,000 followers, all accumulated in less than a month, but most rapidly in the past few days. It started with one video of her biking on my For You page. Then another of her going on a run. Then another of her talking about gut health. Finally I started recognizing her and went to check out the account.
“You’ve been on my fyp at least 7 times the past few days I was convinced you were a big influencer but I can’t believe you have less than 9k,” one commenter wrote, just one day ago, on a recent video.
“Bro I feel like ur gonna get so big in a few months,” another quipped.
“I already hate it here,” Glavan joked back.
Like Paris, Glavan makes vlog-style videos that don’t participate in trends and function as daily, sometimes hourly, updates on her life in NYC. It’s less that she’s following in Paris’s footsteps and more that both women seem to have cracked something the TikTok algorithm really likes: a lot of content from a fit white brunette.
Before we have a repeat of my Victoria Paris article, the fact that Glavan is being promoted by TikTok for physical attributes she can’t control doesn’t mean I don’t like Glavan or think she’s a bad person. I actually really like her content and think her discussion of health, climate change, and politics is a breath of fresh air on the app. I’m excited to watch her blow up and give these topics more attention. It would just be great if the next blow up TikTok’s algorithm facilitates doesn’t feel like déjà vu. Again.
Follow Kate Glavan on TikTok here, on Instagram here, and listen to her podcast with Emma Roepke, What the F*ck Is Sea Moss?, here.