By Lydia Fletcher
“Toph, it’s TV Tuesday!”I say as I reach for the remote, my cat runs from across the other room, impatiently yowling as her favorite YouTube channel is cast onto the screen.
“Mek Mek Mek Mek,” she chitters at the TV.
As mice dart across the screen, she sits attentively, too entranced in her shows to notice I’m filming her for our TikTok.
In Toph’s world, #TVTuesday is a tradition. With the hashtag alone having 3.7 million views, Internet fame is nothing I expected when I adopted Toph in 2021.
Although I started posting videos of her to our account @Tophs.World last year, we didn’t achieve true virality until February when I garnered over 1 million views for calling her “an angry meatball” while she stared me down.
Her diluted calico coloring hit the lighting just right, and she had just tried to run outside in the snow, so she was cold and extra puffed up.
People latched onto that video and began wanting to learn more about her. I ended up making an intro video about us since we had gone from around 400 followers on the app to almost 10k overnight.
Video embed link: https://www.tiktok.com/@tophs.world/video/7061073207822142766?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7109466154851370538
The sudden stardom was electrifying, but I didn’t expect it to last long. I thought I had finally found my 15 minutes of fame and was embracing it for however long it lasted.
That was February 2022. It’s now October 2022 and since then we’ve amassed a following 71.7k strong and gotten over 4.3 million likes.
The profile statistics aren’t what’s important to me though. I don’t make money from this venture, nor do I ever plan to. I just film my silly little cat making silly noises at the TV and somehow have gained an audience for it all.
I think animal-centric accounts and videos on TikTok have an easier time gaining an audience and building community. They don’t present polarizing ideas and many times it’s just an animal doing something entertaining.
Although I focus my account on my cat, I am not alone in that niche. #CatsOfTikTok has over 165 billion views while #FunnyCatsOfTikTok has 1.3 billion views.
Creating an internet presence and amassing a following is strange. I have people saying Toph “gives them a reason to wake up in the morning” or they’d “die for her.”
These comments and the parasocial relationships that fuel them bring on complex feelings.
I think it’s important to realize that your ability to have boundaries doesn’t go away when you post on the internet. Sometimes they may be harder to enforce, but when you have an online following, they’re essential.
There is just an amalgamation of complex feelings that happen when you become famous for something other than yourself, especially when it’s your pet.
I think people forget that animal-centric accounts are run by people. Although her TV-watching habits may have you thinking otherwise, Toph cannot speak for herself.
She can’t post her own content or filter her comment sections. That all falls to me.
In no way do I want this to come off as bitter and ungrateful; I am so glad Toph can bring joy to people, and that people look forward to seeing the videos I create. I still love posting ridiculous videos of her and planning what we’re going to watch next week.
#TVTuesday will still be a thing. I will still be showing off my self-proclaimed “iPad baby of a cat” on the app.
*video embed link: https://www.tiktok.com/@tophs.world/video/7083858733050170666?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7109466154851370538 **
Somehow that video has gotten almost 10 million views since being posted in May and still gets likes to this day.
I am so grateful to have this opportunity to build community on the app and get to share Toph with the world. I’ve had followers tell me watching Toph has helped them cope with the loss of their own cat, or that Toph always makes their day better and that’s what makes it worth it.
Toph makes me laugh daily, so being able to bring that kind of joy to someone else’s day makes the complexities of her niche internet micro-celebrity status worth it.