- A TikToker's prank pretending to tattoo her toddler went viral, just as she hoped.
- While she received a negative response from some viewers, it also helped boost her business.
A TikToker who has gone viral after pretending to give her toddler a tattoo to match one of her own has said the controversy has helped to grow her business.
19-year-old Kaylee Thomas, who owns a tattoo shop in Michigan, posted the video titled, "Tattooing matching tattoos on me and my 3-year-old" on June 30. The clip shows her applying a design of two intertwined hearts on her daughter's arm with contact paper, before using what appears to be a tattoo gun to trace over the image. She then goes on to seemingly tattoo the same design on her own arm.
The video received a staggering 10 million views and counting. Thomas said she felt "amazed" by how popular the video became, but despite her using the hashtags #fake, #prank, #notreal, and #justasharpie, many believed her daughter's tattoo was real, leading her to receive a flood of angry and hateful comments, she said.
@zeal_tattoos Matching tats with mommy #saginaw #matchingtattoos #foryoupage #tattoos #fake #prank #notreal #justsharpie #gotya ♬ Beat - beaty
Thomas has gained thousands of new followers, but not every response is positive
Thomas said that since she opened her tattoo studio in February, the vast majority of her clients have come from TikTok — and that the number has increased since her controversial video went viral, which led to her gaining close to 16,000 new followers, she said.
"It has helped my business a lot as far as getting clients. I love my job and I love that I am able to make content that attracts people and I'm hoping I can continue to do that with this sudden burst of attention," she told Insider. "I continue to get texts on my Instagram and phone number, which almost all start with, 'Hey, I just saw your videos on TikTok, and I love your work!'"
But as well as the positive attention from potential customers, Thomas has also received her fair share of negative comments from concerned viewers. One user commented, "Umm this is not okay." Another even likened it to child abuse.
Thomas said that she doesn't take the comments personally because she knows her video was just a joke. "I understand where people are coming from when they genuinely believe the video," she said. "Their opinions are valid. They just don't really look into it for real to know it's not real before commenting."
She thinks the negative comments have not affected her business because they are mostly focused on her video and not the tattoo studio itself.
@zeal_tattoos Enjoy my tattoo shop renovation lol, Might be a part 2 once i can aquire a ladder to do the top of the wall #fyp #tattooshop #michigan #saginawtattooshop #femaleartist ♬ Storytelling - Adriel
But that doesn't mean the backlash didn't have real-world consequences — she's even had to stop answering calls from her business phone (which is listed on her TikTok bio) because so many people were flooding her number, she said.
"I would keep getting people calling my number asking about the video, or just saying stupid random things that were totally unrelated just because they wanted to call the number," she said.
Thomas said she has also received several texts of people acting "aggressively" towards her about the video, or asking whether the tattoo is real.
Despite this, Thomas doesn't regret the post. "People commenting only boosts the video and pushes it out more," she told Insider. "All in all, this was just a harmless, funny prank video and I'm glad people got a kick out of it."
Thomas always hoped her video would go viral
Toddlers getting fake tattoos is something of a trend on TikTok, Insider previously reported.
It appears to have started in December 2022, with a video by a TikTok user who goes by @furnx420 that received 10.7 million views, and many comments that appeared to believe it was real, even though the caption read, "obviously a marker."
While many videos that pretend to tattoo toddlers include disclaimers about it being fake in the captions or hashtags, this may not be immediately apparent to viewers scrolling through the app, especially as full captions don't display on the screen unless users intentionally expand them by clicking the "see more" option.
Despite the backlash some creators received, Thomas told Insider she decided to do the trend for fun. "My daughter really enjoyed getting her 'tattoos,'" she said. "She's been in love with art and tattoos since she was 1 year old, before I even became a tattoo artist or even thought about it."
Her first video pretending to tattoo her daughter was posted in April 2023, and she posted a similar one on June 25 — gaining more views with each iteration, before the most recent one really blew up.
@zeal_tattoos rainbow, unicorn and dinosaur tattoo #tattooshop #femaleartist #saginawmichigan #faketattoo #justmarker #hehehehe #funny #prank #fake ♬ PUT YOU ON GAME - Russ
Thomas told Insider she noticed viewers "seemed like people were really into" these types of videos, so thought she had a chance to go viral. "I stepped it up and made a better one that really caught people's attention," she said.
Thomas said that while she knew the video was somewhat realistic, she was shocked by the number of people who thought she had given her daughter a permanent tattoo.
She said she "felt it was obvious" that her daughter's tattoos were not real because they didn't look red or puffy like her own, and she didn't show footage of using a needle on her daughter's skin. "People are confused about if it's real or fake because they don't know anything about tattoos, along with the fact that people will believe anything they see online," she said.
While Thomas said she will probably post more videos like this in the future, she noted that she will also make other types of videos too. "I don't want this to be the focus of my online presence," she said.