Week-to-Week: How a TikTok Love Triangle became Peak FYP
A dive down the rabbit hole of algorithmic platformed storytelling
Welcome to Week-to-Week, Episodic Medium’s (mostly) weekly newsletter written by me, covering events in the television industry or in this case falling down a rabbit hole of TikTok storytelling that is too long to appear in full in the average email inbox (click the link to read the whole thing if it’s truncated). To receive future newsletters, and for updates on the shows we’re covering episodically for our paid subscribers, sign up below.
Technically speaking, yesterday I was supposed to publish a finale review for The Veil, FX’s limited series starring Elisabeth Moss. I covered the premiere when it debuted a month ago, I even wrote up some notes after watching the finale last month. But I have honestly not seen a single person on social media even suggest the show is on their radar, and there’s something so empty about contributing to a non-existent conversation. So here’s the short version: the plot fizzled by the end, the attempt to balance out Moss’ MI6 agent with her target was a lost cause in a finale that heavily focused on her character’s backstory, and the setup for a continuing series of adventures for Imogen would have been adequate if it seemed like the public actually desired such a thing, which I’d argue they do not. If you want to discuss more in the comments or the Substack chat, let’s do that.
This has been a problem for much of this year: while Shogun was a breakthrough, we saw a range of limited series like The Regime and The Sympathizer that failed to draw enough attention to generate meaningful weekly dialogues (despite the great efforts of Josh Spiegel in covering the latter for this newsletter). Combine that with binge releases like Fallout and Baby Reindeer that were successful but also led to delayed and asynchronous dialogues, and the TV zeitgeist has been woefully thin at a time of year where it’s supposed to be at full force. I had thought this would help shows like Interview with the Vampire that had built-in fanbases, but it seems like AMC is just too far off the beaten path these days, and Apple TV+ has also had a rather lackluster few months to boot, with star-studded shows like Sugar and Palm Royale landing with a thud.
The result is that while I’ve been too busy for newsletters, there hasn’t been a huge collection of TV topics that have required commentary—I’m in “wait and see” mode on plans like Shogun transitioning to an ongoing drama, and the increase of streaming bundles is a development we’ll understand better once the dust settles. But there have been some developments in fictional narrative production that I feel the need to address, albeit in a space that the average reader of this newsletter may not be engaged with. Because at a time when there’s somehow simultaneously Too Much TV and No TV To Talk About, my TikTok feed has become consumed by a crossover love triangle that points to the application’s capacity for seemingly organic, carefully constructed storytelling.
The Episodic Rituals of the TikTok FYP
I have yet to do a full-tilt newsletter on TikTok, but the app has been a central part of my larger media diet since I started teaching using the app back in 2021. What I think you need to know if you’re someone who’s never used it is honestly pretty basic: it’s a short-form video app heavily focused on algorithmic viewing, foregrounding a “For You” page (FYP) in which guests are shown videos TikTok believes they will be interested in. While you can follow individual users, this is not a prerequisite for curating a feed, which can instead be achieved through likes, comments, and how long you watch videos that TikTok feeds you in an effort to discern your taste. Videos can be extremely short (like Vines) or up to 10 minutes in length, but most are around 1-3 minutes. There is no end to the genres of video that can trend on the platform, but a lot of virality is centered on “Sounds,” where a song or audio clip becomes a format of sorts for creators to put their own spin on another creator’s idea.
Beyond those basics, the central detail you need to remember about TikTok before embarking on any kind of conversation about it is that it is impossible to generalize about what is happening on the platform. The algorithm is so personalized that you may think something is trending, but you’re just so in that corner of the app that you’re seeing every video. Case in point: I’ve been getting videos by a creator who is collabing with “famous TikTokers” on a series of food videos, and while the algorithm has decided I’m invested in his particular series, I’ve known almost none of the creators (most of whom have millions of followers) he’s introduced as though I’m supposed to be impressed. There’s even a common video format where creators will effectively bully you for failing to realize that the sound they’re using isn’t trending: you’re just so targeted by it that TikTok has convinced you anyone cares beyond your niche community.
That said, while niches are a huge part of how TikTok personalizes the app, its interface is explicitly designed to encourage creators to speak across divides. The collaborative potential of TikTok is encouraged by the “Duet” and “Stitch” functions that give creators quick and easy tools to engage with other creators’ content. The former focuses on reactions, which enable the creator to offer ongoing commentary or dialogue with an existing creator’s video in a side by side format, while the latter creates a “call and answer” approach. My single viral TikTok is a stitch on another creator’s video: he was complaining about how awkward it is to ask for letters of reference from professors, and I stitched it to explain how to make it less awkward.
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Duets and Stitches are also, by their design, a storytelling medium. They create a sense of seriality—there have been countless times when my FYP has fed me a stitch or a duet without having seen the original video, and my immediate response is usually to follow the rabbit hole (which the app makes easy, requiring just clicking on the link in the caption). The same goes for the “reply as a video” function, which enables you to record a video in direct response to a comment received on a previous video, which appears on screen so you can click it and dig deeper into the ongoing narrative. You don’t need to use these to create a story, necessarily: Reesa Teesa’s 52-part “Who TF Did I Marry” went viral earlier this year simply as a series of numbered videos that the creator collected as part of TikTok’s Playlist function. But the existence of these tools makes a more narrative form of storytelling possible, along with an algorithm that has a tendency to “bring you back for Part 2” as the comment sections often demand.
In my time on TikTok, I’ve increasingly started to see creators think about the narrative possibilities of the app in ways that leverage the ritual function of ongoing narratives. When I look at what’s currently on my FYP, there’s an inherently episodic quality to some of this storytelling. I don’t know how I specifically got on Golf TikTok, but I’m now regularly seeing three different accounts creating episodic series around the sport. One is a British lad who is golfing every single day until he makes 18 pars in a row, while another is an American golfer trying to make par on a par 5 with every single club in his bag. The third, meanwhile, is Danny Sanicki’s Wisconsin-based mini-golf league, which delivers multiple daily videos of pre-taped tournaments split into multi-hole increments complete with updating scoreboard, commentary, and a “major” tournament at the end of each season with a crowdfunded purse. The way all these accounts leverage the ritual dynamics of daily uploads along with the commercial breaks and cliffhangers central to episodic releases has been far more interesting to me than the golf itself. And while this is also part of the logics of how online video—in particular YouTube—emerged in its infancy, the “flow” created by the FYP makes it feel more like I’m “tuning in” to get my daily updates.
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But what’s currently dominating my feed goes far beyond a single creator figuring out how to leverage the specifics of TikTok’s algorithm with optimized narrative strategies, and it’s delivering an experience that I don’t think has a clear parallel in any other media form.
Yuval & Ayamé & Oliver
I don’t necessarily know if this is true, but I’m pretty sure that it was Oliver who came across my FYP first. A content creator from New Zealand, he arrived in my feed with his emotional car singing videos where he’d belt out pop songs—I’m guessing that it was probably either his affection for Taylor Swift or Harry Styles that led to his presence on my FYP, which sees a lot of pop stan content. These videos rarely had any kind of message, but his other content was focused heavily on mental health, thus framing his scream singing as an emotional release. It was this combination of content that got him on the radar of Swift herself, who through her management selected Oliver to be the recipient of the hat she wears performing “22” on the Eras Tour at one of her Melbourne shows (where she told him she loved his videos). This video dramatically increased his following, which has now surpassed one million followers. (We’ll come back to Oliver in a bit.)
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Then there was Ayamé. A creator from Britain, Ayamé posts a range of different videos in the lifestyle/comedy space, but none of her more “influencer-y” content—like videos about ordering room service while staying at a hotel—made it onto my FYP. I simply knew her based on her reaction videos, which utilize the “Duet” function in order to respond to other video content. Actually, as I write this, I realize that Ayamé absolutely made it into my FYP before Oliver, but never for her own content. A duet she posted two years ago to a “Sing if you find them attractive” trend appeared on my feed constantly, but always with other creators posting different photos that lined up with her reactions. In fact, until I started researching this, I don’t think I ever actually knew who she was reacting to, which is a reminder at how one’s influence on the platform can extend far beyond your own content.
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Eventually, however, Ayamé herself became a part of my FYP with her reaction videos to—and no, I am not making this up— “glass objects rolling down stairs” videos, which was shortly followed by her reactions to “various objects being crushed by a hydraulic press” videos. Ayamé, like many creators, is adept at developing a brand, to the point where my FYP served me up a video of a creator riffing on Ayamé’s reactions by posting duets where they were pre-screening the video to determine whether or not she would like it. While the accounts Ayamé herself was reacting to are fairly generic content farms for viral videos, her reactions gave them new life, and built her account up to nearly four million followers.
And then we arrive at Yuval. Of the three creators in question, Yuval is unquestionably the most circuitous path to my FYP—whereas Ayamé’s reaction videos are part of a genre that TikTok broadly considers to be generically successful on the platform, and Oliver’s convergence with pop stars made his content a straight line from trends I was connecting with, Yuval’s brand is harder to explain. Conveniently, he went ahead and did it for us when he hit 2 million followers in a video that I showed my students on the final day of class this spring when discussing the dynamics of being a content creator in our contemporary moment.
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The short version is that Yuval made a Wordle Bot, recorded some linguistic TikToks, began to find his voice, and then one day started launching absurdly detailed investigations—for me, the first Yuval era to come across my feed was the “Height Guessing Guy” period, but his willingness to basically take every unspoken bet a creator makes meant that his content became a more diverse part of my FYP. It was in this spirit that a video appeared on my FYP in which two of these worlds collided: in January, Yuval stitched a video of Ayamé asking her followers to “guess where she was” where he engages in a forensic deep dive that confirmed not just the hotel she was staying in but also the specific type of room she was in. The video even has a clever kicker where he points out that, while she framed it as a mystery, her influencer-y Instagram post about the same stay identified the hotel in question, making all of his work unnecessary.
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As I note above, I was familiar with Ayamé, but had never seen the video he was stitching. What I did see, however, was when she duetted his stitch, reacting to his investigative process in exaggerated shock and horror. And TikTok’s algorithm determined based on my choice to watch these videos that I wanted to see the rest of the story, and so over the past few months I’ve watched how the two creators have engaged in some very aggressive inflirtuencing. In March, Ayamé posted another room service episode, daring someone—read: Yuval—to figure out where she was again, which Yuval did a few days later. This video added some new dynamics to their connection, with Yuval actively needling her, thus garnering further exaggerated reactions when she (inevitably) duetted the video to react to it. By the time we reach mid-April, Ayamé is posting videos effectively begging to be found, which Yuval replies to with an amount of swagger—rizz, as the kids say—that almost makes it seem like something you’re not meant to be witnessing.
I want to reiterate that I don’t actually follow either Yuval or Ayamé: the FYP simply determined that these TikToks represented an ongoing narrative, based on a combination of the stitch/duet features and the comments, which by April were hugely dominated by dedicated viewers desperately waiting for Yuval to find Ayamé yet again (as well as additional flirting outside of the bounds of the videos themselves). This was the context which met a video from Ayamé earlier this month where she engaged in a very normal influencer strategy of collaboration, posting a lipsync video with none other than Oliver during the latter’s trip to London. And while that video was enough to draw comments furious that she was flirting with someone other than Yuval, she followed up with an additional video actively positioning Oliver as a love interest she turns to when “he hasn’t replied for 2 minutes.”
It is here where I want to pause for a second. It’s clear that Yuval and Ayamé are actively cultivating this narrative: in the “find me” video that followed, the latter writes in the caption that “mum and dad are going through something right now,” embracing TikTok’s decision to lean fully into shipping the two together. What’s unclear is just how much of this was a formal collaboration. While Oliver’s visit with Ayamé in London feels very much in the spirit of early YouTube collabs between influencers, her connection with Yuval is done entirely through duets and stitches, along with comment section followups that certainly create the sense of organic interaction even if there was strategizing happening behind the scenes. The two creators are obviously each feeding the frenzy around their flirtations, but they’re giving the impression that it’s happening exclusively through the app itself, rather than through a more traditional creative process.
The introduction of Oliver into the narrative is an additional wild card here. It is again unclear whether he was aware during the collaboration with Ayamé that he was signing up for a role as the other man, but he leapt into the part with gusto: after a video where Ayamé actively positions herself in the middle of a love triangle between the two men, Oliver posted videos casting himself as a Bridgerton-style love interest, performing a spirited version of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” and delivering a direct callout to Yuval in a now-deleted video you can find duetted here. And when Yuval responded by finding his home address and sending him roses and a romantic note, he leaned into the Challengers of it all with a tennis TikTok, a narrative stoked by Ayamé herself in a video where she references both Bridgerton and Challengers in celebrating her good fortune.
The longer this goes on, the harder it is to believe that there isn’t active planning on the part of those involved. However, the strategies they’re utilizing aren’t groundbreaking for the platform: connecting to trending shows and movies like Bridgerton and Challengers is something these creators would be incentivized to do anyway, even if it wasn’t part of a months-long narrative arc. In the past week, though, it’s become clear that they have an adept understanding of how to develop story across the platform: Ayamé posted a supercut of Yuval and Oliver’s audios over a dramatic video of herself struggling with her decision, Oliver performed a dramatic reading of Yuval’s note, and in response to the latest “find me” video Yuval posted two videos—one that I’ll get to in a second, and another where he appears disheveled in response to Ayamé’s request for “vows,” informing her (and everyone following along) that he is sending her something to a table where she drank her coffee this past Sunday, arriving tomorrow (May 30) at 3pm. It’s suddenly turned this into appointment viewing, as fans either wait for Ayamé’s video or take to the streets of London to try to witness the moment live if his clues left the door open for it.
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Peak FYP
I realize that was a lot of granular summary, but it’s important for you to understand how this was experienced over the past few months—you can technically binge through it using a “Collection” that Yuval has posted on his account (which I can’t hyperlink to watch on desktop), but the slow burn was a huge part of the appeal, and the whole experience felt like a distinct byproduct of TikTok’s design even if the actual narrative is right out of a romance novel—Peak FYP, if you will. It’s impossible to imagine a story like this unfolding on Instagram or even YouTube, especially given how organic it feels with stitches, duets, and of course the fact that I didn’t actively seek out any of it. TikTok delivered it to my FYP because it knew I was invested, and Yuval, Ayamé, and Oliver kept telling the story because the algorithm incentivized them to do so.
The result has been a relative phenomenon. While their recent videos may not be reaching the 22 million who watched Ayamé’s reaction to Yuval’s initial investigation, every video in Yuval’s collection has at least a million views and hundreds of thousands of likes. And while most of those viewers likely had one of the three in their FYP before the story started, it’s no doubt bringing the others into feeds where they were previously absent, building their followings and merging their audiences for a much-anticipated finale once Yuval himself makes the trip to London.
Yuval has committed to this trip, but he didn’t simply agree to do it for the plot. Instead, in the midst of unending requests for him to “find her” in person, he made doing so contingent on his supporters donating to a GoFundMe for a Palestinian family in Canada raising money to help rescue family in Palestine—he’d book the ticket when the GoFundMe was fully funded.
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When that GoFundMe was fully funded, he switched it to another one, and then another. When he posted his most recent response to Ayamé’s “Find Me” video, he buried the actual location at the very end of a video which he begins by suggesting that he has discovered some “upsetting things I’ve learned about the people I’ve been doing this with.” This turns out to be feint, as he transitions into details of a new Palestinian family on GoFundMe linked in his bio (his seventh). When he ends the video, he encourages his followers to leave fake comments reacting vaguely to his fake scandal to ensure that anyone who clicks on the comments for spoilers will be encouraged to keep watching the video and see the new family’s information.
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It’s only been two days, but that GoFundMe has already been replaced by another. Yuval isn’t the only creator in this triangle who has actively used their platform to raise funds to support relief in Palestine—Ayamé promised to donate all proceeds on a recent evening skincare video to families in Gaza, and has a family posted in her Linktree alongside a link to Operation Olive Branch. Her account includes a playlist of videos documenting her activism in this effort, some of which is framed through the “Pass the Hat” initiative where creators with larger followings choose families to support and consciously game the TikTok algorithm to create monetizable videos and donate the proceeds. And while Oliver hasn’t foregrounded the relief efforts as significantly, he’s nonetheless posted about the bombing in Rafah amidst the larger narrative, reinforcing how they’re all using the increased platform created by their love triangle for a cause larger than their mutual benefit as content creators.
This too, I argue, reinforces this as a distinctly TikTok narrative development. The app’s rise in popularity in the U.S. is directly linked to the Black Lives Matters protests in the summer of 2020, and while many still perceive the app as a place for dancing and lip syncs, that activist spirit remains a crucial part of its DNA. And so it feels only fitting that Yuval would make engagement with activism a compulsory part of the narrative, embedding it within videos that are also important canon for the story at hand. While it’s impossible to gauge how much money the three creators will make as a result of this storytelling, especially given TikTok’s ever-changing monetization policies, there is tens of thousands of dollars of relief being sent to Gaza by those following along.
It’s a tangible legacy for an inherently ephemeral story. Although I suppose it’s possible that we’ll be seeing the same story play out a year from now, and Yuval’s collection means that it can be binged by new viewers, TikTok as a platform is about being in the moment, and this moment will eventually pass. If we operate with the presumption that Yuval and Ayamé are not actually soulmates, and that Oliver’s participation in this series reinforces its artifice, then there will come a time where “mum and dad” will need to go their separate ways. Content creation forces creators to continually chase the algorithm, all while avoiding burning out on one particular creative outlet. For their own sake, this love triangle will eventually need to end, and I have confidence based on what we’ve seen so far that the writers of this particular romance will find a way to utilize the platform to great effect—the fact it will be somewhat lost in time is part of what makes it Peak FYP in the first place.
I’m sure that there’s been requests across the various TikToks for this to be turned into a movie or TV show, given how many people are following along with the story while ignoring the efforts of streaming services or cable channels to compel them to tune in. But my ultimate takeaway as we head toward the story’s climax is that what makes this so compelling is how embedded it is within the TikTok platform. It’s a story that leverages the app’s collaborative tools, harnesses the algorithm’s love of ongoing series, and highlights the community’s activist spirit. At a time when the U.S. government is actively trying to position TikTok as a negative social force based on its ties to China, it’s hard not to think about what creative opportunities would be lost if the app were to be banned as suggested.1
At the very least, we’d lose this embodiment of Peak FYP, the most engrossing drama not named Shogun that I’ve watched this spring.
Episodic Observations
Whenever I bring up TikToks with my students, I’m always careful to preface it with an acknowledgment that most of them might not know what I’m talking about. But I always enjoy seeing those moments of connection the algorithm creates where there’s a handful of students who are also on that side of TikTok. Curious to know if any of our subscribers who use the app were tuned into this story in the same way I’ve been.
I’ve honestly fallen woefully behind on a lot of TV, but I’m definitely going to try to watch some of what I missed this spring over the next month or so. I expect the newsletter will become a bit of a catch-all for this content, so once I escape the rabbit hole reflected by this newsletter, I’m going to start on shows like Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Ripley.
As a reminder, our spring schedule runs through June, so we’ll have a complete schedule for the summer toward the end of next month. However, spoiler alert: things are looking mighty empty for a significant part of both July and August as it stands, so we may have to figure out some ways to fill those slots Lost thanks to last year’s strikes.
My position on the TikTok ban is that there are lots of reasons to be concerned about data collection among social media applications, and a bill that exclusively targets TikTok because of China is a terrible way to pretend you’re actually interested in addressing them.
I saw you covered The Veil and I like Elizabeth Moss, so I gave it a try. First episode was so painfully boring I couldn't continue forward, and it seems that was the smart call. Also, all due respect to Moss, who is usually fantastic, but that accent wasn't it. Something was just off about it and I can't put my finger on what. Between this and Kate Winslet's dictator flop, what's going on with usually excellent leading ladies picking projects that crash and burn?
I feel happy in my life choices because I haven't seen a second of this idiotic drivel on "my side" of TikTok but that could be because I do as much as possible to stay on "following" and not "For You". And I haven't even really heard of these supposedly huge creators. I have seen reference to Yuval, who looks like the most annoying dude in the world. This is only because a creator I actually do respect and follow, Christian Divyne, referenced this saga obliquely and has some minor side narrative with Yuval. I just reject this kind of thing completely. I don't go on TikTok for long form narrative