- Grady Stickney gained over 600,000 TikTok followers in four months.
- Stickney, a college student, told BI he’s overwhelmed that his success came as a TikTok ban looms.
- President Donald Trump gave TikTok a 75-day extension to find a buyer or face a US ban.
The TikTok ban has left creators facing uncertainty over the past year. One of TikTok’s fastest-growing creators says the pressure has been overwhelming.
The law that could ban TikTok went into effect in the United States on January 19 after the Supreme Court upheld it. The law requires TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to divest from the app.
While President Donald Trump issued an executive order on January 20 granting a 75-day extension for TikTok to find a buyer, the social media app’s future in the United States remains in limbo.
Creators can often build large followings on TikTok faster than other social media platforms. One TikToker previously told BI that he gained over 3 million followers by making four to five 10-second videos a day.
So the possibility of a TikTok ban came as harsh news to Grady Stickney, who has gained over 600,000 followers and 155 million views on his account since November.
“One of the things that affects me the most is the fact that it happened so fast,” Stickney said through tears in a TikTok video on January 18, a day before the app briefly shut down to US users.
@fartsmella_02 I simply cannot put into words the amount of support and personal growth you all have helped me achieve. I don’t want to think about a ban because it scares me to think that all of you that have helped me gain a completely new perspective on self-confidence and authenticity (in a literal month) will be gone in an instant. Please keep asking me for pictures, please keep telling me stories, please let me be the first to try something for you. I love all of you, thank you so much.❤️
♬ original sound – fartsmella_02
Stickney told BI that his success on TikTok has been overwhelming.
In just four months, outside of the thousands of new followers and millions of views, he also said he got an offer to audition for a feature film. He said he struggles with the idea that “this could all be gone tomorrow,” but is comforted that his videos have resonated with so many people.
“It’s a little voice in the back of my head now that says, ‘even if I don’t get to keep the constant interaction with these people, people love the fact that I’m myself,'” Stickney told BI.
Stickney is a senior education major at a small Christian college in Indiana. He said the confidence gained from social media will help his teaching career.
“Now that this has all happened, it’s more about the fact that I can go on after social media is over and know that I affected that many people in a positive way,” Stickney said.
He said the support he has received on TikTok in recent months has been surreal. He receives compliments on his personality, his music taste, and his “willingness to be myself in front of this many people.”
“It’s just so validating,” he said.
Stickney said his personality doesn’t always mesh well with others because of his “raw” nature, but TikTok became a home for him to find a community that appreciates his sense of humor.
“It’s all support, and so it’s just so overwhelming to see this many people be this strongly affected,” Stickney said.
Grady Stickney
It’s a common misconception that — through ads and brand deals — a large social media following always comes with a large check. While some creators do rely on income from social media content, a survey from Influencer Marketing Hub showed that more than 48% of creators make less than $15,000 a year.
Stickney said he makes about “enough to pay for dinner.”
Stickney’s account mostly consists of videos of him dancing and making facial expressions inside a Spongebob-themed bathroom. Stickney told BI that he didn’t expect to find success when he started posting regularly in November, but he decided to keep making posts after seeing how much attention they were getting.
“I posted one dancing video in my bathroom to a SpongeBob song, exactly how I do now, and threw up the rock finger gesture where, like the pinky and the pointer finger, and people loved it,” Stickney said.
When asked if he is a SpongeBob fan, Stickney said, “No, that’s the best part.”
Stickney said his father — a community artist — painted the bathroom for him and his sister when they were kids and “apparently had an obsession with Spongebob.”
“I love the show, but I’m not, like, this fanatic about SpongeBob that everybody assumes I am with this bathroom,” Stickney said.
