Entertainment startup FourFront invented a cast of fictional influencers onTikTok .- Actors direct and film their own scripted content in collaboration with production teams.
"I have had enough of men keeping me in the dark like I'm an afterthought!" Tia, a TikToker with over 112,000 followers (@thatsthetia), says emphatically while slamming open her closet door and launching into a monologue about her dramatically twisted love life in a September 21 TikTok.
Tia is a student, PR intern, and future princess - well, only if she gets back together with her royal ex. She's passionate, smart, and no stranger to sharing her love life with thousands of viewers.
She's also not a real person - but that doesn't stop the likes, views, and comments asking for updates on her outlandish story from rolling in.
@thatsthetia Reply to @halliwell19 I’m still mad but who tf sent me the flight ticket!!?? #royal #dating #bodyguard #fiance #boyfriend #fictional #relationship
♬ original sound - Tia
Tia is one of 22 fictional TikTok personalities conceptualized, scripted, and managed by FourFront, a social media and live event-focused entertainment startup. In eight months, TikTok accounts that the company manages have collectively amassed 1.93 million followers and over 281 million views, according to co-founder Ilan Benjamin.
The startup's foray into fictional TikTok content - a Marvel Cinematic Universe-esque web of interconnected characters, as Benjamin describes it - is finally coming to a head in a live "reveal party" on Thursday, where eight of its characters will compete for a fictional billionaire's fortune for viewer's entertainment. It's intended to expose their scripted connections, while also revealing that this is all just for fun.
FourtFront's founders said they don't want to deceive anyone - they want you to know it's fake while enjoying the story.
FourFront's model is character-driven TikTok entertainment
According to Benjamin, FourFront's storytelling is designed to make viewers "more attached to characters" than plot decisions, eschewing the choose-your-own-adventure model that companies like Netflix have iterated upon in recent years with specials like "Black Mirror: Bandersnatch." Viewers can interact with characters in the comments of their videos, and sometimes the accounts themselves will reply.
The company, a fully remote operation with 18 employees, was co-founded by Benjamin and Anna Melamed. It's split into writing, production, post-production, social media, and development teams (geared in particular towards virtual interactive experiences) that help craft content for TikTok and maintain the company's fictional accounts.
"We call it the evolution of motion pictures into living pictures," Benjamin told Insider. "Stories that feel alive and live beyond your screen."
The plot points vary wildly. Some echo familiar tropes: Tia, played by 29-year-old actress Cameisha Cotton, is a student who learns that her boyfriend Khosi is, in fact, an incredibly wealthy prince from a fictional African nation.
@thatsthetia bruh who put me in Coming to America pt. 3?? #royal #storytime #boyfriend #blackgirl
♬ original sound - Tia
Other invented narratives like Ollie's (@oxenfreeollie, 150,900 followers), a transgender man embarking on a journey to reconnect with his estranged father (whom he eventually learns is also trans), focus on topics like family and identity. Ollie's bio describes his account as "a coming of age story made with love by [rainbow flag emoji] actors & creators."
The company wants you to know its characters are fictional
Although Tia and Ollie are labeled as fictional in the hashtags of their posts and in their bios (Tia's reads "formerly known as TikTok's fave fictional Princess"), it can be easy to miss those warnings when scrolling through your For You Page.
In a story for the Daily Dot that touched on a number of FourFront's characters, writer Daysia Tolentino raised concerns about audiences who could become invested in fictional characters on TikTok without realizing they're fake.
@sydneyplus When your revenge plans lead to.. new friends? ##wedding ##cheater ##fictional ##relationship ##friends ##revenge
♬ original sound - Sydney
Riot Games' Seraphine - a similar kind of fictional influencer that was active on Twitter, Instagram, and Soundcloud in 2020 - received criticism for asking for encouragement and posting about her mental health, with some saying that the account was actively fostering exploitative parasocial relationships.
Melamed, who runs FourFront's social media, said the team has guidelines for interacting with fans in the comments of characters' posts. That includes never encouraging audience members to share personal information or trying to "get more" out of sensitive interactions.
"We would love to come up with ways to work with TikTok to telegraph that this is fictional," he told Insider. "Because long-term, we don't think we're going to be alone in this space."
Actors direct and film their own stories
Cotton told Insider that playing Tia gives her agency as an actor. She's directing and filming all of her own content in communication with ForeFront's production team. A television and film actor with a BFA in musical theater, Cotton also has a full-time job working in social media, though she didn't have much experience with TikTok prior to being cast as Tia.
She films for Tia on off-hours around her full-time job and works with FourFront to establish a timeline to deliver footage once she receives a script.
But for now, Cotton films her own stories - in her apartment - and organizes her outfits, makeup, and filming locations in a spreadsheet.
"I'm my own director, I'm my own creative producer, you know what I mean?" Cotton told Insider. "I have all the spreadsheets so I can keep my head on straight in that sense because it is just me and a mini ring light and two little lights."
Melamed, one of FourFront's co-founders, described the production model as "the leanest that Hollywood has ever seen."
The flexibility and low production costs have allowed the company to test out new characters and storylines, Benjamin said. He told Insider that the roles are SAG-AFTRA compliant and that in addition to base pay, actors will also receive a percentage of profits that the character generates from advertising, merchandising, and tickets. Out of 41 actors that FourFront has cast in its projects, Benjamin said that 18 were SAG-AFTRA members.
"We want [actors] to feel incentivized to see this character succeed for years to come," he told Insider.
The end goal is to scale up engagement with live events
There's a lot more money to be made by FourFront's fictional characters. One simple way, Benjamin said, would be adapting to the creator model by taking on brand deals. The AI Instagram influencer Lil Miquela, who has 3 million followers on the @lilmiquela account, has taken on campaigns with brands like Prada.
TikTok, however, isn't the endgame. Eventually, FourFront wants to scale audiences' ability to engage with characters using AI technology to automate communications. That's already beginning: One of FourFront's characters, @Butler_Darren, invited audiences to log in to a Discord server where they could chat with a bot representing his fictional billionaire boss.
Some of FourFront's characters have successfully drawn in audiences to live content, such as a Zoom-based event that involved the FourFront characters Sydney and Carmen. According to Benjamin, that free event drew approximately 13,000 sign-ups - something that FourFront could eventually charge to access.
And with nearly 2 million followers across FourFront's active accounts on TikTok, and videos from characters like Sydney amassing millions of likes, there appears to be an audience for this. But first, Benjamin said, they'll need to know these influencers aren't real.
"The more that people know this is fictional, the more that they can just get lost in it and be entertained by it," Benjamin told Insider.