the mcelroys' personal tiktoks (a pre-tiktok ban recap)

My credentials for this recap: I have been a regular TikTok user since around summer 2019 and I'm a teenager so I guess you can say I'm skibidi with youth culture or whatever. I followed the McElroys from the time they started posting on TikTok to their eventual decline in use of the app. (Travis still posts but my FYP has kind of gotten the hint that I don't want to see his stuff anymore.) This recap will follow the brothers from least to most active, with bonus content (yay). If you want to see a particular video or anything without having to actually use TikTok, send me a message from the Discord :P

First, a quick follower count for the record: Griffin has 82K followers and 371.6K likes, and is following 52 people (this makes sense considering his inactivity). Travis has 155.8K followers and 2.8M likes, and is following exactly 666 people (ok we get it you like Supernatural). Justin has 183.2K followers and 2.9M likes and is following 352 people. At least a quarter of these likes are from the Berries and Cream video, but these stats are impressive considering he's posted much less than Travis.

The McElroy Family account itself only has 109.5K followers, but does have 3.2M likes. It follows 12 people, and they're pretty much who you'd expect: the brothers, people/companies they've worked with like DFTBA or Erika Ishii, DND creators, and then an almost blank account with 6 followers that I have to assume is either their social media manager or an accidental follow?? I don't feel any strong need to recap this channel because they post pretty much just the video clips that get posted on the YouTube channel but in vertical format and with captions, or stream clips, but there are a couple other types of video on there (a clip of Justin backstage taken by Griffin was recently posted and they obviously posted promos for MaxFunDrive and the Miggy plush). It's what you'd expect.

Least active: Griffin. He posted his first video on June 6, 2021. It was one of those classic 'my name, age, sign, etc' videos with a silly filter on his face. The next few videos were him using the green screen video feature and talking over the video with stuff like "anyone remember the Backyardigans" and then layering over the previous video until it just became a jumbled mess. Besides that, he posted a couple life videos (dancing to his kid's singing toy, doing a silly filter with his son, and vids of the Dinosaur Park in Texas), clips he thought were funny from random TV shows he was watching (like some guy saying "my wife" as a Borat reference in a completely normal voice), and then your standard random shitpost and forced MaxFun promo post. The last video he posted was in March of last year, and it was a clip of him doing the rave thing for the MaxFun live. Besides a couple odd videos like that one, he hasn't really posted on the app consistently since January of 2022.

Middling active: Justin. Still uses the app and posts stuff, but doesn't post a crazy amount (he's posted around 70 videos since 2020). Posted his first video on September 20th, 2020. Like Griffin, a lot of his videos (especially early ones) were just clips of stuff he found funny or odd, sometimes with reactions. Most notably, obviously the Berries and Cream one, which was posted around 6 months before the sound actually went viral. He's done some running bits throughout his videos, such as calling himself the "Crypto Kid" and pretending to talk about crypto, posting some recipe tutorials for baked goods, including a few of his mom's recipes (this was really sweet to me and he was sharing regional recipes too, which is sick), and a series called "America's Great Donuts" where he reviewed donuts across the United States based on where he was on tour. Besides that, he mostly just posts comedy videos (ex. one where he reads prompts for car ads but fumbles it and can't stop laughing) or family/life videos (the cutest one of which was his cat sitting inside his daughter's lunchbox and pretending to fall asleep while he begged her to evacuate so he could pack it). There's also the obligatory MaxFun Drive post,,,,which for some reason the most recent one on his account is Travis with a rainbow fish filter on his head talking about donating.

Overall, I find Justin's TikToks the most enjoyable even if his skits can be a little overlong. His videos are either sweet, an attempt to promote a smaller business through the donut thing, genuinely funny, or like, skippable but not bad enough that I'm pissed off about it lmao

Most active: Travis. He posts a lot and very earnestly which I do have to begrudgingly respect to a certain extent. His first couple TikToks are him with the classic "I'm holding your hand" energy and are of him saying "do something nice for yourself" and "yay you're alive" and such, and it was posted on October 13th, 2020. They're kinda nice but feel very patronizing and weird and he is talking the same way he would if I was a literal child. Following this theme, he is the only brother to do explicit fanservice on his account, duetting people's TAZ cosplays and lip syncing along to MBMBAM audios.

The rest of the videos on his account either follow those themes or one of the following:

Him stitching someone being like "react to this with your favorite blah blah" and talking about his

Him trying to get someone else to interact with him (he made a video talking about being "THAT sibling" during the holidays and tagged Frankie Jonas. which is weird! sorry but that's weird and gross and mean) or (more successfully) tagging creators who do a Bit with suggestions for what their next Bit should be, like some guy who I guess talks about different superheroes. He also frequently interacts with Hank Green in a way that is kind of giving, like, "wow Hank Green got popular on here. maybe me too...? clout?" In fairness Hank does sometimes make TikToks about the McElroys, and they are friends, but 1. Hank has a "thing" he does on TikTok which is why he's popular and 2. Travis does a lot more of this "Hi Hank" stuff than Hank—and mostly about Hank's TikTok content rather than like, vlogbrothers in general or whatever

Life stuff—playing with his kids' toys, or a video of him and his wife's Halloween costumes

Videos where he, in a very normal outfit, is like "I'm so cute today!" aloud, in a very serious tone, which is like. ok. whatever. and then everyone in the comments is like YESSS YOU AREEE SO CUTEEE OMG LOCAL MAN WEARS NAIL POLISHHH

All the fucking salad videos. When he ended this he made a very serious over 30 second long video in a weirdly patronizing tone AS PER I GUESS...about why he was ending the series which included an anecdote about his daughter asking if he was going to show his salad today in a judgy way every day. Honestly good for her

That classic thing he does where he farms engagement by having a paper with "trans rights" sloppily written on it in his background, or makes fun of a conservative guy that it was pretty obvious was saying stupid shit, or whatever, and then everyone in the comments is like OMG THE LOCAL MAN WHO WORE NAIL POLISH IS AMAZINGGG

then finally we have him promoting his Twitch or Max Fun Drive or whatever, and many many many "comedy videos" in the same style as Justin.

I found absolutely zero of Travis' TikToks enjoyable. I only watched about 40 of the hundreds he's posted, so maybe there are a couple good ones, but I doubt it. My personal least favorite was him doing a filter that randomly selects a Supernatural character, getting Sam, and then smirking while the caption was about how similar he looks to Jared Padalecki. Hey? my brother in chuck maybe pick a different guy to fawn over.

Anyway in short Travis wants to be TikTok famous so bad but he chose quantity over quality and it's just bad guys

Bonus recap: Sydnee's TikToks! Of the rest of the McElroy family, Sydnee seems to be the only non-brother member of the family who posts on the platform (note that by non-brother member I mean people most directly associated with the podcasts. Rileigh has an account and I'm sure some other members of the family do but 1. they're not really posting about the brothers and 2. it feels weird to recap someone's account who's just making cute mini vlogs about school because it's unrelated to any podcast stuff. Rileigh did once post a video of Justin and Sydnee making up a TikTok dance and it was pretty cute but that's pretty much it!).

She did a series for a while where she basically went up to Justin and recapped random clickbait Internet articles about shows/movies she hasn't watched/doesn't care about while he went like this -_- It was pretty funny the first few times but I think she did like 30 of them and everyone was just also kinda like this -_- by the end. Other than that, she did a silly Grimace shake skit with her kids and siblings and mostly just posts cute life stuff like being at a concert or doing a TikTok dance with Justin. She hasn't been active on the app in a while either.

I hope this recap both serves an archival purpose after TikTok goes away and provides some light into the lives of the McElroys on an app not many older people use. good night america