When you take your tea niche
Caroline, the creator behind @aerithgirl, is your gossip fairy godmother.
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.
Drop niche tea requests in the comments…—Kate
Nothing is more interesting than other people’s drama. In my own life, I can withstand confrontation as well as a dandelion in the wind—except in the case of that woman in Fort Greene Park who made a snooty comment about my friend’s dog. I’d yell at you 100 times over.
But it’s sweeter to consume these things second hand, when you have absolutely no stake in the situation, but can still vicariously experience the thrill and, sometimes, schadenfreude that comes with it. Getting your fix, however, requires someone to patiently explain it to you. In that sense, Caroline, the creator behind @aerithgirl, is the nosy people of TikTok’s fairy godmother.
Last fall, she began sharing “niche tea” with her now over 319,000 followers, ranging from drama in the cosplaying community to beef between theoretical physicists. By day, Caroline works in marketing and media analytics, but her “niche tea” empire has expanded across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube as she becomes the go-to commentator for the goings-on in corners of the internet people come across online.
While drama channels have been around on YouTube and TikTok for some time, Caroline’s work is different. Rather than giving minute-by-minute updates on pop culture figures, she likes there to be a resolution, and she likes it to be about something people didn’t even know they were interested in.
“You can be invested in a way that is not critical to you, and it gives you that excitement, like why water cooler talk became a thing,” she says over Zoom. “We connect with each other through discussion of discord.”
As two people who spend a lot of their time getting to the bottom of mysteries online, Caroline and I chatted on Zoom about what it is that draws people to these stories, how she sources her information, and how she walks the line between “drama” and “disaster.”
Do you remember the first niche tea you ever came across?
Yes, and it's not that I came across it. It is the first one that I was so compelled to talk about that I made a video about it. I've always been very into the YouTube commentary community. The YouTube drama community, not as much. I prefer the commentary, just because I prefer an entire story with different takes that take me through stories. And that can be real life stories, or that can be, like, video game retrospectives. There are a lot of creators that do that type of stuff, predominantly on YouTube. And so this was one related to Dream, who is probably the most prolific Minecraft player. I've never followed any of his stuff. I remember seeing some stuff about the face reveal. I knew that he got into a lot of controversy, but I didn't know as much about it. And I saw the back and forth between him and Nicolas Cantu, who is the voice actor for Gumball, and I love Gumball. And I was just like, this is the most bonkers shit I have ever seen in my life.
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The problem is I'll get very interested in a thing that I have no background on. Like, I'm not involved in this. No one I know plays Minecraft in any meaningful way, except with their kids. But I just like that people are talking about it, and that's very interesting to me. So then I will engage with all this stuff, and then I have no one to talk to to expel that energy. So then I was like, "Hi, welcome to this. I have to talk about this." And I think that's a big aspect of what people like, is that I'll set up what's going on. You don't have to have any other context necessarily coming into it. I will give that to you, or at least the context you need, and hopefully introduce people to some of these different genres in some cases, like the cosplay ones. The birding one, in particular, people were very interested in, and I learn a ton about this stuff as I go. So it's win-win.
When you made your first niche tea video, did it immediately blow up? How did you realize, like, "Oh, this is something I should make more of"?
The response was engaging in a way that was unlike anything. Not just, "haha that's funny." Like, “Let's talk. Well, no, oh, this is what happened.” And then people will add more things. I really liked the level of conversation that was coming out of it. I realized how much I enjoyed being able to just talk about this stuff that I don't have anyone else I can really talk to about, and that it will find its way to places where people wanna hear it instead of me forcing it upon the people immediately around me, which is something that doesn't give you the same level of dopamine as being able to provide something to somebody who wants to receive it.
I think critical for me with this is that I can jump into a topic, learn all the things I wanna learn about it, think about how I wanna summarize it, what are the key things that stand out to me, and then do the video, do the editing, post it, and then I can move on to the next thing. That's also part of the reason I usually am not right on the cusp of it. And that's part of the reason I don't like drama channels as much. It's not anything to do with them, but it's the content by nature, because they're so on top of it. It's like minute-to-minute updates. I would rather it be fairly concluded or at least [have] something meaty to talk about.
Why do you think we're drawn to that kind of stuff? Even though we may not have a personal stake in it?
I think that's the key point, is not having a personal stake in it. I think especially in the last several years, the epidemic of doom scrolling and that kind of thing. It's like watching a soap opera. You can be invested in a way that is not critical to you, and it gives you that excitement, like why water cooler talk became a thing. We connect with each other through discussion of discord as it exists. I always liken it to Am I The Asshole threads, because they are also philosophical conundrums that people can talk about and take in other people's takes on. So we wanna be able to do that, but we wanna be able to do it in a way that isn't necessarily always something very serious that has very serious implications for people in real life. It provides drama without stakes and I think that's important.
What would you say is the nichest tea you've covered so far?
Oh God. The most specific niche... I think it actually is the Fountain Pen one. That's just so specific. Like, of course there's a fountain pen community. I like that one also, unrelated to it being the nichest, but there was no actual drama because no one was mad. They all hunted very intensely to figure out what was going on. They were in contact with somebody here. “But no, they're in the US and they're not making it. And so we contacted somebody over here and that was a retailer, you can't trust them, so we gotta go to the actual factory.” And then they found out the reason and, "Oh, it's not gonna be what we want. Okay!" It was so intense and yet they were so chill.
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I think wholesome can be satisfying when there is that element of surprise, when you see how much someone cares about something. Because then that makes small things feel like they have much higher stakes.
The only through line that I think I've noticed has to do with when there's competition involved, and when it's very niche competition that leads up to a resolution. I think the reason the bird video was so well received, and it's the biggest of them in the series in terms of views and engagement, I think it has to do with the fact that, yes, it's literally people looking at or listening to birds. But I think having that resolution where it was like, this guy tried to do this and now he has conceded.
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I don't cover "this person is allegedly grooming" or [sexual assault], and I know people probably have feelings about that, but that's very much intentional because to me, I want it to be actual tea and not not.
Is there a place that niche drama tends to originate?
Definitely Twitter, especially for authors. A lot of it happens on TikTok. And then Reddit. Facebook, I don't have as much of, and purely that's because it's not searchable or public in the same way. People also like to delete on Facebook in a way that they don't necessarily in other places. Like the princess stuff happened a lot on Facebook. I had to be given screenshots of stuff. I did not see any of that because it happened in private Facebook groups that these people are on. Same thing with, there was one about the Wicked World’s Fair in Pennsylvania. That is a predominantly Facebook conversation. And I had to find enough public stuff to get in front of the right people to let me into a private group. And that took a while because they were all very hesitant.
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I wanna be in the clear as much as humanly possible from a legal standpoint. And also I wanna be fair in what I'm presenting. I care about the conversation happening around the thing. Like I care about what happened, but I care about it as much as people care about it. And so this is what we're talking about. We're talking about how this person responded, how the allegation came to play, how are people feeling about this? That's what I really like, and that's what I think is the key.
You mentioned people bringing you screenshots. The people who bring you the tea, are they in the communities being like, "I need you to get the word out"? Or what is their motive?
Most of the time it is not people who are in it. And I do always kind of "hm" about that, if I do get it that way. Most of the time it is me getting tagged in something by people who want to see a recap. They're like, “figure this out for me.” I'm like, “I gotcha.” That's exactly what I want. Or sending me stuff. If it's a big thing, like a fandom is upset, someone in the fandom might be like, “Hey, we're all really mad about this.” I'm like, okay. I wanna talk about that. But if it's like, “I am having a problem with this one person,” I'm not a huge fan of that because what I care about, again, is the social conversation. I do amplify situations, but bringing initial light to a situation is not the purpose of it. The purpose is to talk about the gossip if it's happening. And I've had situations too where people have come to me with serious things that they need help with. And I did a mutuals-only video where it's like, "I am not the person to cover this, does anybody know someone that I can refer them to?" I want to help. I would like to help in the best way I can. But this is not something that I should be talking about, you know? And so I try to help to the best of my ability in those situations.
It really strikes me how much work you put into this. What makes TikTok a good place for this? And are you interested in taking this to other platforms?
People had asked that I throw them on YouTube because they wanna listen to them in the background or while they do other things on their phone. Some people are like, "I'm only on Instagram," so right now I just do reposts. The reason I initially did it on TikTok is simply the ease of the ease of filming. YouTube is a whole thing. I'm kind of learning that as I go, because I've bought the technology to do—and I have thoughts around—longer form stuff exclusively for YouTube. Maybe older stuff, or bigger things that most people know, like Lauren The Mortician. What's going on with that? You know?
I'm not doing this for monetary reasons. I have a full-time day job, but there's a dopamine response to being like, “yes, I have been paid,” the same way you get it from engagement, likes, new followers, that kind of stuff. So I'm trying to make it not just reposts, but new different content on YouTube. And then on Instagram I have pivoted that to also have, I call it, Bonus Jorts Tax, where I have a cat and people like my cat and it's an excuse to post more stuff about my cat. So go to Instagram if you want more Jorts, and YouTube ideally to get longer form stuff, and then I will repost all of it everywhere. But TikTok also is very, very good about getting you in front of people organically. You can't do that nearly as well on YouTube, or without at least a following to start with. You have to have something picked up by the algorithm, and none of my videos have been because they're really not set up that way. Same thing for Instagram. Even on Reels, most of my Reels don't go anywhere. My posts basically just get in front of a select number of people.
Before you go, what's some niche drama or tea you're keeping your eye on right now?
I get tagged so heavily in certain things now. Like the lobster guys are beefing. So I got tagged in that a million times. And the thing with Cozy Cardio and the Today show screwing her over. But the one that I got tagged in a little bit that I really want to look into but I haven't gotten to yet, is Wig Guy in the princess community. There's a guy, and this guy has a history and that's why I find it so interesting, who just harasses performers—performers who do princess parties, performers who do plays or anything like that. And he's like, "Why aren't you using your natural hair?" Like, he's got like a hair thing. The whole thing is just fascinating.
