Wildlin Pierrevil is making TikTok the new Twitter

“I couldn't describe my TikTok in an elevator pitch necessarily. And that's what I appreciate most about it.”

Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, by Kate Lindsay and Nick Catucci.

In other words, Pierrevil is a prominent voice in TikTok’s town square. —Kate

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@notwildlin#stitch with @adamxmelinda this is kind of a ramble but hold it

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There’s no one way to introduce Wildlin Pierrevil. For me, he’s the TikTok creator behind a viral video about “weaponized incompetence” (above) but you also might know him as the person defending wearing boxers with holes in them. Others may have learned about him through his comedy, his theater work, or his early TikTok video series about Harry Potter. On an app that encourages creators to find a niche and double down on it, Pierrevil’s videos are refreshingly outside any one box.

“The way that TikTok talks about niche … is taking away the primary benefit that marginal people who are coming online really get to receive, which is that they can exist in their multidimensionality,” he tells me over a recent Zoom call. Instead, he thinks of TikTok more like Twitter, where his “cornucopia” of deep thoughts, silly jokes, and other creative work can coexist in one space. 

Out in the “real world,” Pierrevil is an actor, but uses TikTok to find community with his 325,000 followers and other creators the app has connected him with over the years. In this interview for paid subscribers, Pierrevil speaks about his relationship with the theater side of TikTok, how he carved out his own space on the platform, and the complications of navigating the expectations of his audience.