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■ Tommy Cockram has almost five million followers. Pictures: Ivan Kemp

Tommy Cockram

Barwon Heads teenager Tommy Cockram has amassed nearly five million followers on TikTok in just over a year. The 15-year-old speaks with JUSTIN FLYNN about his new-found fame.

What do you post about that makes you so interesting?

Mystery, horror and creepy videos in general.

How creepy or gory?

Not visually, but the themes are.

What’s the most popular video you have posted?

I posted a video called ‘Worst Ways People Have Died’. It’s had 40 million views.

What’s the worst way?

Meat grinder. I stopped doing it because I didn’t really like making them. There is one where a girl died because she was glued to the toilet seat. That one got a few views.

OK, let’s move on. The topics of your videos are dark and mysterious, but how do you keep coming up with different ideas?

What I’ll do is, when I think of an idea, I’ll Google or YouTube and start researching about it and see what I can find on there.

Sometimes it takes me hours and hours but usually I can end up coming up with a good idea, but sometimes I don’t. Sometimes it takes me days. I try to post twice a day, but sometimes when I don’t think of ideas I just can’t post for a few days.

My favourite videos to make are ‘Terrifying things found by YouTubers’ and ‘Kids board games as horror movies’.

I like doing videos called ‘Things are bigger than they seem’.

You started out doing trampoline videos and soon worked out that other stuff was more interesting?

About a year ago my first TikToks were my flipping videos but after that I changed it to what I’m doing now.

I was doing all different sorts of videos and once I did an interesting video, I did really well so I just kept on doing them and doing them and now that’s what I do.

And you have nearly five million followers?

Within the first week I was gaining hundreds of thousands of followers so it was pretty quick and it kept going after that. I ended up with a million followers within a month.

People must like my content I guess.

Do you have a following outside Australia?

The most is from the USA, around 25 per cent of my followers are from there.

Did you ever expect it would become this big?

I didn’t expect it at all. I didn’t think I was going to get over a couple of thousand.

I hope by the end of next year I could get 10 million, that would be absolutely awesome.

It’s more about how many views and likes you get on your post rather than followers.

Having a million followers, you’re going to hope to get a couple of hundred thousand views.

Even if you only have 1000 followers and you’re getting 1000 views that’s still really good.

It’s more about ratio. I’m gaining about 20,000 followers a day.

People will post my TikToks on YouTube and I saw one that’s got five million views and it’s just my TikTok.

Do you enjoy the attention?

Yeah, it’s awesome. But I try not to think about it too much. It hurts my brain. It’s more a bit of fun.

Do you have a signature look or move?

What I’ll do at the start of all my videos is go out into the backyard or for a walk and do my signature finger pointing to the sky to highlight the text in my videos.

Have you attracted any criticism for your content?

No, but I’ve had a few videos taken down. Sometimes TikTok will take them down, it’s annoying. Sometimes it’s not even about the post, it’s random things and then I send an appeal and they get put back up.

Usually it’s just an accident.

You didn’t show your face in your videos at first?

I didn’t really show my face at all on my videos, but once we companies started messaging me about doing promotions and that sort of stuff, I started using my face a bit more and that’s all I do now.

Sorry, did you say ‘companies messaging you about promotions’?

A few US companies have reached out. It’s a bit difficult though. It’s more of a niche market. It’s hard to advertise something that’s happy on a horror genre page.

I did a promotion for Future Me. I won’t go into money or how much, but got paid a bit.

I’m not really fussed either way with that. I just do it because I enjoy it.

Do you get recognised in public?

I did a few times in my hometown, just a couple of people in Barwon Heads.

What sort of responses do you get from your fans?

When I make a video usually they will comment that they want a part two, so they want more

■ Tommy Cockram starting out making flipping videos.

parts to the video.

Why do you think you’re so popular?

The content I make, people find it really interesting. Once you start watching my videos, you kind of want to keep watching more.

Have you had any weird messages or requests from fans?

People asking me about myself or wanting to buy my page for like $30.

And they’re being serious as well.

Somebody wanted to pay me $50 to teach them how to do a backflip.

But mostly they just ask for more posts.

What does your family think of all this?

I’m the fourth of six kids. They think it’s really cool.

My sister (18) loves them and my little brother, who is nine, loves watching them and my teachers will sometimes watch them as well.

What do you like to do away from the camera?

I broke my arm but next year I’m playing footy at Barwon Heads.

Hobbies are g-tramping, which is like flipping on trampolines in your backyard and I like to go skiing and bushwalking and camping.

Where do we find you on TikTok?

@tsezy ●