Every Backup Account focuses on just one TikTok. Follow me on IG where the real jokes are.
If Millenials are obsessed with being in front of their phone camera, Zoomers are obsessed with the perfect moment to be out of it. Whereas the early 2000s begot the mise-en-scène of the Selfie, the TikTok gen is perfecting the art of the unbecoming. One particular example is something I am hereby dubbing Keeling. Keeling is when a creator, usually during a Live, breaks character and keels over (out of frame) from laughter. I cannot think of a more infamous instance of this than in this week’s TikTok when Terri Joe watched Madonna do a hit of poppers.
Terri Joe aka Kelon Campbell aka @itzpsyiconic has a god-given improvisational talent. He says he never pre-plans what his drag personas will do or who will join them before going Live. This unpredictability has earned his Live’s a cult-like following, one that rolls with the punches of him notoriously being banned multiple times in a night. Join the r/Psyconic Reddit, and you’ll witness the almost sportscaster-like way fans track Kelon’s lives from one backup account to another (he has 9 in total). It is just one of the many ways Kelon has iconoclastically circumvented the limitations of social media broadcasting
Terri Joe, the wheelchair-bound sundress-wearing devout Christian woman is one of the most recognizable comedy acts of the pandemic era. She is also an extreme bigot, homophobe, and zealot. She is the proverbial mother of the house of content violations. While Terri and Kelon’s other characters play out centuries-old comedy tropes like blue satire, parody, and absurdism, there is something undeniably fresh and uncancellable afoot. Terri Joe’s popularity seems rooted in how incredibly obvious the rouse is. No matter how hot Kelon's roasting gets, his almost religious commitment to breaking character into fits of laughter aims to bring even the dimmest recipient in on the joke…eventually
Breaking character can be considered the cardinal sin of acting. British theaters even nicknamed it corpsing after the worst possible moment to break into laughter: when you’re supposed to be playing dead. Yet, the further our entertainment gets from the wooden stage, the less concerned we seem with its creaky rules. Keeling seems like just one crucial ingredient in what makes indecent comedy fun again for Gen Z. Keeling isn’t your SNL Weekend Update laugh attack. Keeling serves more as a necessary evil, a virtue signal from actors playing inside the dicest of community theaters. I’ve already written about the ways in which TikTok live, where Terri Joe and other unabashed queer characters thrive, has become monetized and overexposed. For Kelon, these conditions, the only ones he has ever known as a paid actor, subsequently fit perfectly in with his motivations. The nothing-to-lose attitude of the Terri-verse has therefore become a survival blueprint for other queer creators. If nothing is guaranteed, what could possibly be taken seriously?
My favorite type of Keeling is when two live-streamers fall out of their 16:9 frames simultaneously, leaving just us, an audience of ones, momentarily being played. It is in these brief moments of audibly losing it that we are reminded of the absurdity of it all. The absurdity that a comedic genius of Kelon’s characters might never escape the TikTok Live hellscape. The absurdity that he could be one of the most consistently live-broadcast queer character actors on the planet (he goes live 4 times a week) with zero rights protections. Isn’t that hilarious?
When Paper Magazine asked Kelon about the moment Madonna did poppers on his Live he told them what was going through his head (emoted live into a big fat Keel):
“Wait, are you literally doing poppers on Live like, what is this? The fact that she didn't get banned for that was hilarious.”
Kelon's greatest achievement might be creating a priceless, anything-goes cyberspace, only accessible to the elite if they can handle him. Ironically all this power has been obtained through the reclamation of Medea and Mrs. Doubtfire-level “bad-drag”. Who wouldn’t be chuckling?
Keep your eyes and ears peeled as the next edition of the Backup Account will be episode three of our inhouse podcast where Leo Herrera and I get under the hood of what going viral looks like for a queer creator.
Speaking of cash, if you’re a financial supporter of Backup Account, thank you for the rose. Your patronage supports my independent queer audio documentary work. I reached a massive milestone with one of my doc projects this week, and I couldn’t have done it without the subscribers to Backup Account.