On TikTok, the quickest way to virality may be to say people laughed at you while you filmed your video

• TikTokers who say they were laughed at while filming a video often rack up mega views online.
• Comments flock to support those who say they were mocked for recording themselves in public.

Some TikTokers seem to have discovered a surefire way to go viral: say you've been mocked or made fun of in public and you'll win over a slew of sympathetic viewers, often without ever having to prove that the incident even happened at all.

Back in April, TikToker Jackie La Bonita went hugely viral when she posted a video of herself in the outdoor seating area of a sports stadium, while two women could be seen mocking her several rows behind. The clip, which has since been taken down, garnered tens of millions of views, with followers rallying in support of the creator and criticizing the girls for being mean.

In recent months, multiple videos have popped up featuring TikTokers who say they were also laughed at and mocked, while they were in the process of making a video.

On June 25, a TikToker who goes by @readers.archive received a massive 12.1 million views when she said she was laughed at by two girls who made fun of her appearance and the fact she was filming herself in the book aisle of a Target. Two weeks later, TikToker @lillian3600 recorded herself twirling and posing on what appeared to be a train station platform, while an on-screen caption read she had just noticed people in a train car were "pissing themselves laughing at me." The clip garnered 337,000 views.

While some viewers have questioned whether these incidents actually took place (as it's often the case the laughing parties are neither heard or seen in the videos themselves), the vast majority of commenters showed total support for the attacked TikToker. When someone expresses that they've been attacked, as was the case with this TikToker, viewers tend to rally around that person.

Filming in public spaces can be a tricky business, however, and the online community is not always guaranteed to be on your side.

Fitness influencer Joey Swoll has made a name for himself of late for criticizing women who call out men at the gym. In one video, Swoll admonished a woman who referred to a man she caught on film as a "creeper."

"You never know someone's story or what they're going through. Stop this," he said.

In November 2020, George Resch created the hugely popular Instagram account Influencers in the Wild, which has over 4.9 million followers, and shares clips of content creators who have been spotted going to extreme lengths to film themselves in public, and are generally mocked for doing so.

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