#HYPE HOUSE SERIES SERIES#

TikTok stardom is becoming comprehensible as a career on the internet, as dozens of startups crop up aiming to help these suddenly famous kids navigate brand deals and partnerships (for a cut of their riches, of course). If you get a sick day, you lose followers, which is a loss of revenue, which is, you know, your job.” The influencer gold rush “When you stop posting in this line of work, you lose engagement,” Warren explains in a confessional. Even as he grapples with troubling family situations and a foot injury, he’s terrified to take a mental health break. Meanwhile, Alex Warren is grasping at straws, staging stunts that aren’t getting as much online engagement as he wants.

In one scene, some Hype House members try to come up with content ideas while lying on giant beanbags, but the best idea they can think of is to make up a “lit-ass handshake.” They might live rent-free in a beautiful mansion, but they don’t seem to be having fun. Some Hype House members aren’t churning out content on behalf of the group as often as Petrou wants them to, because they feel uninspired and disillusioned. Throughout the eight-episode series, a cloud of anxiety hovers over the scenic Santa Rosa Valley home. With almost 20 million followers, the official Hype House TikTok features the stars experimenting with new filters, iterating on the latest trends and, of course, dancing.

#HYPE HOUSE SERIES SERIES#

The Netflix series marks the end of an era for the Hype House, focusing more on the challenges that these influencers face than the antics of these young millionaires.Īll things considered, the videos that these TikTokers post aren’t that different from what any average teenager would post (except that now they post from a mansion). Plus, TikTok now directly pays creators for the traffic they drive on the platform. His influencer friends like Vinnie Hacker (12.9 million followers), Jack Wright (8.8 million followers), Alex Warren (14.7 million followers) and others live rent-free in the $5 million mansion - all they have to do is post on the official Hype House TikTok once per month, which generates the venture revenue through ongoing branded content deals. Thomas Petrou (8 million followers) is the de facto manager, though he says he doesn’t take a cut of profits - he calls himself the dad of the house, but in addition to making sure everyone does their dishes, he makes sure that the Hype House brand can net at least $80,000 per month to stay afloat. This concept isn’t new - YouTube, Twitch and Vine stars have experimented with these collaborative, live-in projects for years. The eponymous Hype House is one of TikTok’s longest-running content houses, where social media stars live together and film videos.

On “Hype House,” these ordinary-teens-turned-icons agonize over the nature of their chance celebrity status, worrying that their fame will vanish as quickly as it appeared. I feel like I’m not allowed to be depressed.” What do you have to be depressed about?” says Alex Warren, a TikTok star with 14.7 million followers. Unlike the wealthy offspring of celebrities, this class of superstars shot to stardom virtually overnight, for seemingly arbitrary reasons, all dictated by a mysterious algorithm. We used to describe celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton as “famous for being famous.” But the TikTok megastars featured on the Netflix docu-soap “Hype House” are famous for being ordinary.

Hype house series