When it’s your family that goes viral
Gabby White’s Christmas vacation ended up becoming her breakout TikTok moment.
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.
Just assuring my family, for whom this is their worst nightmare, that I’ll never put them on TikTok. —Kate
This holiday season, I had a seat at Christmas dinner with the many people I follow. Over one million people ended up crashing Gabby White’s trip back home for the holidays when not one, but two different videos of her parents went viral on TikTok.
White has been posting on TikTok for almost four years, and even longer on Instagram. But it wasn’t until Covid hit that she decided her quarantine hobby wouldn’t be baking or tie-dying, but influencing. She began posting on Instagram and TikTok in earnest, and after a series of viral TikTok videos, has earned over 34,000 followers on the app.
A lot of this, White will be the first to admit, is thanks to her family.
“I'm really close with both my parents,” she says over Zoom. “I'm close with my siblings. I feel like this is just an added fun thing that we get to do when we're all together.”
Last month, it was an outfit-of-the-day video featuring Gabby, her dad, and her stepmom. Viewers were obsessed not only with her stepmom’s Staud look-alike dress, but the family’s whole dynamic, and insisted on more content when White visited her mother the following week. That video—which gets crashed by her siblings—went viral, too.
“The style in this family is insane!” the top comment reads.
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White didn’t mean to become a quasi-family vlogger, but her entire approach to content creation has been to have fun and see what works. In this interview, she shares how she stumbled upon virality, the ways it’s changed her relationship with her family, and how she faked it till she made it as an influencer.
How long had you been on Instagram and TikTok before Thanksgiving, when a million people watched your family?
So how this all started was during Covid. I had just gotten on TikTok right before Covid started, and not even in a personal sense, more of in a professional sense. I was working for Free People at the time and I launched their TikTok channel. So that obviously forced me to be on TikTok and understand what was going on. But I actually was very anti-personal TikTok. I was like, “This is stupid.” And it was because I was mostly on dance TikTok, and so I very much was like, “I have nothing to post on this app”—which, looking back, I'm an idiot. I could've been ahead of the trend.
It was a different culture at the time. I think a lot of people initially were like, “This isn't for me.”
Exactly. So I got on TikTok probably like March 2020, but on Instagram—I still love Instagram. Instagram is not dead. I truly believe that. But you know, everyone picked up hobbies during Covid. Like people were, tie-dying clothes or making bread, and I would not say that I'm very crafty except I do knit, but besides that, I'm not very crafty. And so my best friend from high school, we lived down the street from each other. So during Covid we were together quite a bit and I was like, “Madalyn, I think my Covid hobby is I'm gonna become an influencer.” And she was like, “Hell yeah. Let's do it.” And so literally every day I would just find things around the house—and also I was at my parents' house. So I would just online shop or find things around the house and make them look pretty and find good lighting and just post that on Instagram. And my friend Madalyn, she would come over every day and take pictures of me and we'd post them and I had this whole curated feed. So that's how the Instagram side of things started, because I was bored, basically. And I would just obnoxiously tag brands in everything that I did to try and get their attention.
So then, as I'm sure you know, Instagram organic growth is extremely slow. I probably had like 1500 followers. And I started making outfit Reels. That's where my videos started, on Instagram making outfit-of-the-day videos. And then it was actually my mom, who loves TikTok, she was like, “You're already making the video for Instagram. Just post it to TikTok. It's literally not any other work.” I was like, “Okay, sure.” So I started just posting them on TikTok. Nothing is happening. And then May of 2021, so like a year after I got on TikTok, is the first time that I had a video go viral. It wasn't for my outfit, of course, it was actually about my sister. So common trend: Videos about my family always do well. It hit a million views. And I was like, “Oh, okay. Trends seem to be working. I'm only gonna do trends from now on.” So then I had a second video go viral, which was about my dad. So, my family is still consistent. That one literally, to this day, it's at like 5.5 million views. It hit a million views in literally an hour. It was the craziest thing I've ever experienced. And that's when I really started to gain followers. And then after that I started to just post me doing stuff, literally anything at all.
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I didn't realize all your viral videos were of family. So obviously your family went viral over the holidays, but that's not even the most viral they've ever gone.
No. So my dad, he is a consistent character throughout my TikTok. So whenever I'm with him, we'll do outfit checks. My parents go to Florida in the winter, so I'll go down there quite often. So last year I was down there for like two weeks. We did a little series called “Cigar of the Day.” My dad loves cigars. And people are always like, “Where's your mom?” It's really funny because the search bar whenever I'm with my dad is like “Gabby White mom.” And then the one with my mom, it was like “Gabby White dad.” There's clearly interest to see family content, which is amazing. But also sometimes I kick myself 'cause I'm like, okay, I don't live near my parents. They both still live in the Midwest.
Did you have to explain all this to them?
Well, my dad, I would say that when I do outfit checks, I don't normally go like, “Okay, this top is from here, this top is from here.” I usually have some sort of story while I'm getting dressed. My dad has TikTok and watches my videos, and so when I started asking him to do fit checks, he was like, “I don't have anything to say.” I was like, “Just say where your outfit's from.” I feel like when it comes to doing outfit checks with him, I kind of revert to the simplest way of doing an outfit check just because he's a dad. But my dad, my whole family, is really into fashion. So that was exciting for him to be like, “I got this here.” And my mom, she's fully on TikTok. We have the same For You Page.
Would you say TikTok has changed your relationship or brought your family closer?
Honestly, no. Like I'm really close with both my parents. I'm close with my siblings. I feel like this is just an added fun thing that we get to do when we're all together. But otherwise, my family has almost maybe too much fun together. I think the only thing, especially with my dad, we used to talk on the phone probably twice a day and we actually talk less on the phone now, but not in a bad way. It's because now my life is on the internet. He doesn't necessarily need to call me as much because he can open his phone and see what I'm up to. He actually called me the other day—so I'm doing 75 Hard, but I'm doing my own personal version of it and I've been vlogging it—and he was like, “Oh my God, I'm so excited for your 75 Hard series. I just think you're gonna reach so many new audiences because you're talking about all this different stuff and you're not just showing your outfit.” And it was so funny to hear him use social media lingo. They've always been so supportive, but this is like a new adventure.
And they know what to hope for for you other than just generally hoping you do well. They're like, “I hope you reach a new audience.”
Exactly. And my mom, like that video of her, she's just refreshing. She was like, “Oh my God, we hit another 10,000 views in 10 minutes.” Like, they're excited about it.
I was gonna ask, why do you think the videos do so well? But I think it's clear that there's a pre-existing dynamic in your family that translates on screen and people are drawn to it. Do you have any boundaries or anything you're careful not to share?
First I'll say: I'm not afraid to delete comments. This is my space, you know? If I don't like your comment, swipe delete. But it's funny because the video of my dad and my stepmom and I that just went viral—so over Thanksgiving we did an outfit check and my dad is white and my mom is Black. Well, my stepmom, she's also white, she's tiny, she has blonde hair. So someone commented and they were like, “Is she adopted?” And I was like, “Okay, first of all, why are you saying ‘she’ as if this isn't my account? Like who are you asking this?” And sometimes with that, I can understand why people are confused and I'm happy to make a little bit of a joke about it. But I would say sometimes like the questions on my mom's video with my siblings, like my siblings and I, we don't all have the same dads. Like I'm my dad's only kid. So there's a lot of inquisitive questions, which, again, I understand the curiosity of people, but it's more so the tone that people ask in where they're like, “Oh my God, you guys are not from the same dad.” And I'm just like, “You know what? It is literally 2024. The nuclear family set up is so out. There are so many different ways that people can be family.” So if there's snarkiness in questions like that, I just kind of swipe-delete those. I don't consider my siblings half siblings, like our parents did such a good job raising us altogether where they truly feel like full siblings. So if people ask about that and the tone of the conversation or the tone of the question is very positive or something that they are also relating to, like, “Oh my gosh I feel the same way about my siblings,” I'll respond to that and be like, “Absolutely. Totally agree.”
You do full-time social media work as well. How do you juggle the two?
So I'll say my usual goal of content on my personal channel on TikTok is one to two videos a day, just because as we know, the more you post the more you're gonna show up. And then also I feel like that's the baseline that I have established for people who follow me. So the nice thing about working in social media is I have become very quick at editing. My partner Will, we live together, I'm always just like, “Here, let me do this really quick.” He's like, “How long is it gonna take?” I'm like, “Literally five minutes.” Like boom, boom, boom. And he's always baffled every single time.
But also I fully work from home, which obviously gives a little bit of leeway compared to those who work in the office. So I will usually make something in the morning before I actually start my nine to five. And then I will usually make something on my lunch break or after. So there is allocated time during the day. But the other nice thing is basically everyone on my team has some sort of social media presence. It's very understood and open and welcome on our team to create content during the day as long as, obviously, work comes first.
Would you do independent content creation full-time? Do you have any goals for your channels?
I love my job. I like having a career. I like what I do. When I really think about it, I actually don't think I would ever full-time content create. I think that the world is too finicky. I like stability. I like health insurance. I like a 401k. And I am very lucky and happy that my stable job is still in the realm of something that I love. It's such a nice balance. So that's the first reason. The second reason is, knowing myself, I would go all in on content creation, which is great, but I think something that I really value on my page right now is if you look at my content, it's basically all at home and it's all me. When I am out with friends or when I'm out in these public spaces with people that I know or doing things that aren't just about me, I try really hard not to be like, “Oh guys, let's make a TikTok.” And so I think if I was full time, I would feel the need to be like “I have to record every single thing that I'm doing.” And I wanna respect my friends’ boundaries. Even my partner, we live together and he's hardly ever on the channel.
I think a lot of creators also come to realize that a little bit of what got them their audience, whether it's their day job itself or just the structure the job created, gets lost when they quit to go full time.
Totally. And then in terms of goals, I'm gonna be honest, I don't really have any. Last year I had crazy, crazy growth. I think I started out 2023 at 6,000 followers and I ended at like 34K, which also wasn't a goal. I really just am sharing shit I love on the internet and apparently a lot of other people feel the same way. I feel really, really lucky that the overall energy and tone of my page is extremely, extremely positive. It's actually quite rare for me to receive any snarky or hateful comments, which I know is not the case for a lot of people on the internet. So I'm very glad that I've curated this safe space, not only for me but other people who follow me who feel safe to comment things and create this type of conversation. So I guess the goal would be to keep that up. We don't need any negativity in 2024
I'm loving this new hybrid of creator + 9-5 employee. seems like it's a balanced way to get the best of both worlds