Backup Account will always be brief—not 280 characters brief, but brief as in each edition will focus on one TikTok only. Paid subscribers thank you for your support, new perks below. Follow me on IG or TT for antics.
user comment: “Not getting a good positive vibe from that man.”
You may not know @hal.baddie by name, perhaps not even by sight, but her taglines? Most def. In her short time online she has permeated the pop-culture canon. But back before she became the catchphrase princess of TikTok, she went viral for something entirely less scripted.
This week’s TikTok is hal.baddie’s first viral upload. It captures when the algorithm put a 23-year-old Trans girl on blast and the a-ha moment that led her on a path to becoming one of TikTok’s most celebrated queer creators.
→ → Watch this week’s TikTok (watch via TikTok):
This scene on a Croatian beach, which holds all the dramatic pause of a ‘90s thriller, wasn’t my introduction to Devin Halbal aka hal.baddie. Like most queens on the scroll, my first introduction to Devin was through the infamous “Bring Back Selfie Sticks in 2022” upload. In that TikTok, Devin walks down what appears to be the main drag of a quaint sunny Turkish town. Her performance gives a winning combination of earnestness and sass that the internet instantaneously claimed as iconic. Devin’s post begged so many questions: Who was this baby American queen of fab? What part of Turkey was she even in? Why did I throw away my selfie stick?
user comment: “Please be careful”
Pushing back a couple of Toks, I quickly learn Devin is spending a lot of time abroad, alone, and is openly transgender. I watch this breathtaking upload where she is getting her facial hair removed by a barber/hairstylist “Turkish Style.” The level of empowerment that’s shared in just 30 seconds is bonkers.
user comment: “Be Careful dorta! Do they embrace the gworls over there”
Pushing back a couple more Toks, I am now in Greece at sunset while Devin jokes that she “needs a bodyguard maybe two at all times.” The caption reads PRETTY BITCH emergency🚨.
user comment: “Girl run”
Eventually I get to the bottom of her feed and click on a vid that has 400k more views than any around it. This is the Croatian beach video, and Devin is shooting travel vlog “b-roll.” She captures a candid moment. A mysterious man off camera is quizzing her about her race and says, “In Croatia, we don’t have a girl like you, it's so exotic.”
user comment: “He was ready to risk it all”
DJing afforded me the chance to travel across the world. I got off planes and into the cars of baritone’d strangers much like the ones Devin makes friends with on her travels. Promoters often did not get the memo that they had booked a very openly gay act. It sometimes felt unsafe i.e. the time I was playing in full drag and the Hong Kong police raided the club. I certainly turned on my Met Gala Behavior to slip out of that one. Just like Devin, in times like that, the only way to grip onto a fellow queen for a gasp or a gag was through my phone.
hal.baddie: “Doll check-in, doll check-in!”
When Devin reacts to the stranger danger interrupting her beach day, she is not the same gregarious and manicured character we know from later videos. This is the creator without a fanbase, before the features in Vogue, W, and Rolling Stone. She is just being Devin, defending herself against a dirty old man in front of an invisible audience. Her confidence to be boldly herself in foreign lands is buttressed by her filming, and clearly, Devin does a lot of it. So when the algorithm did its thing and exposed this delicate moment to hundreds of thousands of allies and haters alike, it poured out a cocktail of shitty and affirming comments. Over time, many of the latter have transformed into calls for action to protect her.
user comment: “protect Hal at all costs”
But Devin isn’t a victim. She’s a warrior princess with a selfie-stick sword. More importantly, she is part of a movement of young queer people demonstrating online how to enjoy ordinary things. Devin says: Go travel but don’t pack your cis-baggage.
You can hear it in her words in this Dazed magazine interview:
“You are powerful, you are beautiful, you are strong . . . Just know that, as a trans person, you have so much more to you than trauma. You are your joy, your ideas, your happiness. You are your beauty. You are not pigeonholed by your identity.“
user comment: “Good for you, hope it wasn’t too uncomfortable😅”
Devin easily could have hidden the beach scene from her feed, but the Tok remains live. Living outside of your trauma is not about hiding it. Devin is taking back from the algorithm what it took from her when it exposed her to transphobes. She’s continued to post moments like it, grading the curve to her advantage a bit more each time. Young queers are using their phone cameras as much for creativity as they are for protection, and in the process are reformatting acts of resilience for social digital space. On that sunny day in Croatia, Devin likely knew something that many young queers have come to learn: even if no one is watching the feed, when the camera is rolling, these men aren’t gonna risk getting out in front of it.