Funny Australian Guy With Blonde Hair
In many respects, JasmineTXO is an ordinary 22-year-old. She loves horror films and chimera tea and starting her forenoon at the gym. Public speaking is one of her biggest fears. Once a week, she teaches a hip-hop class to teenage dancers and, every Dominicus, she works as a sales assistant in a chemist's, a task she'southward had since she was eighteen. In January, Jasmine bought a reddish hoverboard – a two-wheeled scooter that looks like a Segway without handles – and has since mastered the fine art of gliding effectually the business firm on it.
Like many immature Australians, she lives with her parents and younger sister, Leila, in Melbourne'southward northern suburbs. Unlike other 22-year-olds, though, one of her bedroom walls is papered with letters and illustrations she has received from some of the four one thousand thousand followers she has amassed equally a content creator on the video-sharing app TikTok.
I meet Jasmine, who prefers not to go past her full proper name publicly, on a brisk autumn day at a café in Northcote, in Melbourne's inner north. She is wearing sharp winged eyeliner, modest hoop earrings, pale-pinkish nails and a black denim jacket over a tie-dye jumper. She has a huge grin and a wide-eyed warmth near her, exhibiting the same exuberance in person that she does in her online videos.
For vi years, Jasmine has been posting a mixture of trip the light fantastic toe videos, comedic skits and vlogs – video journals of her mean solar day – to TikTok. Since graduating from a communications caste at RMIT in 2019, being a TikToker has been a full-time job. Her videos on the platform accept amassed more 105 million likes and even more views. What started as a fun hobby with her sis Leila and best friend Olivia – the girls originally posted from a shared business relationship – has turned into a living made through advert deals and merchandise, including her own branded bubble tea kit. Her online store sells hoodies, telephone cases and tote bags emblazoned with her slogan, "Spreading Smiles".
Jasmine spends up to 7 hours a day on her phone, a figure she both laments and seems resigned to. There's time spent filming her own content, besides equally videos for brands who pay her to advertise their products: "collabs", equally the influencer lingo goes. The lightning step at which the popular becomes passé on TikTok makes information technology tricky to film videos more than one or ii days' ahead of time. Then there are the unglamorous hours spent editing videos, and more spent replying to comments and interacting with her followers on alive streams.
Earlier filming, Jasmine peruses the app for both content inspiration and to proceed beside of the trends du jour, be it a dance, a comedic sketch or a song. "I'll usually spend at least an hour or so scrolling before making a skit video," she says, searching for the music or short sound clips to include in her sketch. "Every day there'll be new trending sounds that we had no idea about the solar day earlier. Information technology's crazy because that often blows upwards [boosts the popularity of] different musicians' songs."
Jasmine has built a platform on fun, upbeat videos: at that place are skits set in a bulldoze-through, filmed in her automobile, and at the window of her grandmother's shed; she dances with swagger to hits both old and new; holding a laptop in front of her, she recites lines in perfect synchrony with scenes from Tv set shows and films.
When I ask about her audience, Jasmine opens the app to show me the geographical breakdown of her followers. Around 83 per cent of her audience is female, 42 per cent American. Some 320,000 people – only 8 per cent of her following – live in Commonwealth of australia. Though the platform doesn't provide an age breakdown of followers, judging by the commenters on her videos and the people who approach her in public, Jasmine assumes almost of them are children or in their early teens. Like many TikTokers, Jasmine'southward audition
ballooned during the pandemic. In March 2020, she was at 500,000 followers; past the end of the year, she had an audition of 3.3 1000000.
Jasmine is 1 of a growing number of Australians earning a livelihood from the platform. Equally baking banana breadstuff and jigsaw sales spiked during the lockdowns of 2020, so, besides, did TikTok's user base: it became the most downloaded app in the world final year. Though the platform doesn't disclose its user figures, an external estimate by Roy Morgan, every bit of terminal October, suggests at least ii.5 one thousand thousand Australians regularly employ TikTok, a figure that rose past 52 per cent in the outset half of 2020. 70 per cent of users
belong to Gen Z or younger.
The app'southward surge in popularity has created a new breed of celebrity, who – to young audiences for whom free-to-air Television is outdated – are every bit recognisable every bit older stars of the small and argent screens. The platform has decentralised fame or, at least, changed the parameters of who can court attention.
Overnight, in some cases, normal people living normal lives are plucked by TikTok's discovery engine from relative obscurity and projected onto the screens of millions around the world. For immature TikTokers who can
sustain and monetise this attention, the opportunities seem limitless.
TikTok consists of videos typically between 15 seconds and a infinitesimal long (for some users, it has recently rolled out the ability to upload three-minute videos). Kickoff released in 2014, the app was originally known equally Musical.ly and was rebranded in 2018 when the Chinese firm ByteDance acquired it. ByteDance has invested in artificial intelligence research for several years – and cardinal to TikTok is the "For You" page, an endless scroll of videos powered past an algorithm that serves a curated mix of viral content and videos based on the user's personal interests.
TikTok Australia general managing director Lee Hunter says the recommendation algorithm is unique to each user, taking into account factors such as the types of videos a person likes, shares and comments on: "a whole range of things that give us a sense of who you are". The algorithm then delivers videos it believes to exist uniquely interesting in broad verticals such as comedy, sport and DIY, he explains.
Over time, TikTok users have grouped together videos that share a theme. FoodTok, for example, comprises cooking videos rhythmically edited downward for seize with teeth-size consumption; WitchTok features self-identifying witches purportedly casting spells and making content about the occult, which has undergone a renaissance in recent years; Queer TikTok is a trove of educational and supportive videos for LGBTQI+ users; CleanTok is home to oddly satisfying videos of domestic-cleaning hacks. The app's duet function allows anyone to film themselves aslope an existing TikTok video or to add themselves to a chain of videos, as was the case for the sea shanty Soon May the Wellerman Come, which became a viral sensation in January.
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Like many, I downloaded TikTok in 2020 while in lockdown in the Great britain. Later several hours of scrolling, TikTok'south algorithm had carved out and finely honed an addictive niche for me: videos that captured or elicited extremes of emotion. I couldn't become plenty, the app had decided, of videos that made me laugh or cry, simply which were otherwise unrelated past content.
I was breathless at a empty-headed skit of a playground safe inspector aggressively throwing dolls around; at a man trying and failing to finish a moving ceiling fan with his hand; at a girl drowsily attempting to remove gauze from her mouth after having her wisdom teeth removed. I was moved by a female parent reuniting with her daughter subsequently a year separated by COVID-19, and by a form of university students who surprised their professor with heartfelt letters via Zoom.
The videos weren't ever originals: ofttimes they're repurposed from YouTube and given a new life on the app, as in the case of a haka performed at a New Zealand teenager's funeral, the boy's brother breaking down halfway through.
I often found myself opening up TikTok to swipe through but a few videos then looking up much later in a stupor to find that an hour had passed.
In acknowledgement of its ain addictiveness, TikTok runs advisory videos encouraging users to have screen breaks. People are also able to gear up screen-time limits within the app, 40 minutes existence the minimum. Though TikTok declines to provide official statistics, the average user reportedly spends 45 minutes per twenty-four hour period on the app. Hoping to replicate TikTok's success, Instagram and YouTube have both rolled out similar features, named Reels and Shorts respectively.
TikTok is awash with users who have aspirations to be famous. Many list a numeric follower goal in their business relationship bios and there'southward an unabridged subgenre of "How to become TikTok famous" instructional videos on the platform. To earn TikTok clout, some share traumatic stories or fake their videos entirely; others pull outrageous stunts. In December, a Melbourne teenager was banned from Qantas, Virgin and Jetstar flights after joking on TikTok about committing a terrorist assault equally she boarded a flight.
"This is a infinite where fame and virality [the tendency of content to exist shared chop-chop and widely on the net] are channelled post start rather than persona get-go," says associate professor Crystal Abidin, an internet-culture researcher at Perth's Curtin University. "Things that go viral depend on the flavour of the day or possibly even the flavour of the hour." She has noticed many TikTokers – even those with a coherent "make identity" – experiment with different content styles, memes and trends, "in club to continually be seen on the platform and past the audiences that follow them".
"Inventiveness is what'south rewarded, not necessarily a follower count," says TikTok'south Lee Hunter. "You don't need to have huge followings in order to see success on the platform."
Writ large, TikTok's discovery algorithm tin have a homogenising as Vocalisation reporter Rebecca Jennings has described – particularly in the US, where the app has the largest number of users outside China. (In China, the app is called Douyin, and the content between Douyin and TikTok is kept carve up. India had more than users than the The states, but the app was banned there in June 2020.)
"What we're seeing," Jennings writes, "is the everyman common denominator of what human beings want to look at, highly-seasoned to our most base impulses and exploiting existing biases toward thinness, whiteness and wealth."
This is true of the two most-followed TikTokers in the world, 17-yr-onetime Charli D'Amelio (118 million followers) and 20-year-erstwhile Addison Rae Easterling (81 1000000 followers), both dancers whose anodyne only astonishingly popular videos are maybe explained by their youth and conventional dazzler. The app has also been criticised for unequal treatment of creators of colour. At the height of the Blackness Lives Matter protests last year, TikTok apologised to black creators and vowed to make the platform more inclusive.
In Commonwealth of australia, at least, the app seems noticeably – and refreshingly –polyphonic. The algorithm gives prominence to LGBTQI+, Get-go Nations, disabled and other minority creators in a mode that I haven't encountered on other platforms. "There is an explosion of diversity on the app, because it's however working out what its vernacular visual genres are," says Abidin, "unlike Instagram, where the go-to things are mode, beauty and skinny white girls who wait beautiful and are ever a size six."
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Jasmine, whose ancestry is half-Sudanese, half-Greek, says TikTok feels similar a more inclusive space for body positivity. A few years ago, when Instagram still reigned supreme, she felt the attitude to someone like her was, " 'Oh, you're probably never going to brand it: you lot don't fit the image,' " she says. "At present, it's changed completely."
I grab up with Jasmine again on an overcast Saturday at a park in Melbourne's Northcote. She has picked the location to flick a dance to a vocal currently blowing up on TikTok: a 2017 reggae version of Iko Iko, which was first released in 1953. Jasmine and her friend Olivia take learnt the trip the light fantastic toe the night earlier, and evidence up in matching oversized retro shirts, straight-leg jeans and Nike Air Jordans. Jasmine'due south sister Leila has come forth to motion picture them, and they are joined by Jasmine's mum, Stella.
"I hate filming in public," says Jasmine. "Merely in front of millions of people is fine," says Stella, and they laugh at the irony. The girls picture the dance a few times on some boulders, then shift to the middle of a footpath.
"I like her to continue her privacy equally much as possible. Y'all don't want super fame."
Stella and I chat while they film. Jasmine is often recognised in public, but otherwise life has hardly inverse, she says. Stella and her married man were struck, however, when Jasmine organised a meet-upwards for fans at a park in January 2020, with several other TikTok creators. A few hundred children and young teenagers showed up to the upshot. "Seeing the reaction of these little kids just reminded me when I was a child, fangirling over pop stars," says Stella. "It was like, 'Oh my god, she'southward really something to them.' To meet your kid – your little kid – and all these other niggling kids want to be near her … information technology's crazy."
Despite Jasmine's 4 million followers, Stella says her daughter's renown is "still relatively small" in the grand scheme of TikTok fame: a manageable level that doesn't compromise the normality of their lives. "I like her to keep her privacy as much as possible," she says. "You don't want super fame."
Until recently, the most popular Australian on TikTok was 19-year-sometime Sarah Magusara, a Filipina-Australian who lives in Brisbane (at fourth dimension of going to press, she has but been pipped past 20-year-quondam Perth dancer Hannah Balanay who hails from the Philippines). Magusara has amassed a following of more 16 1000000, mainly through videos of herself dancing, and TikToks made with her i-year-sometime girl, Zamira, often in matching outfits for manner brands. Her audition on TikTok grew significantly, she tells me over the phone, when she appear her pregnancy on the app in 2019, when she was still a loftier-school student.
TikTok fame has forced Magusara to adjust to being a public effigy. She says she's always recognised whenever she goes out and at present runs her errands when she's less likely to get stopped; during school hours on weekdays, commonly. If she does a grocery run after 3pm, she's sometimes mobbed by groups of schoolgirls. "I ordinarily make sure to be out for only a fiddling bit considering a lot of people simply want to have photos of me and talk to me, which is amazing, but sometimes I demand to get stuff and information technology's actually difficult." Once, she says, her parents were on an outing alone with their granddaughter. They were approached by a group of girls, who asked whether the toddler was "Zamira from TikTok".
While beingness an influencer seems glamorous, TikTok fame tin can exist both overwhelming and lonely at times, says xix-yr-onetime Rory Eliza. Rory, who goes publicly by her commencement and middle name, has more than than 4 one thousand thousand followers on the app. She started making videos every bit a 15-year-old when the platform was still Musical.ly. When a management visitor, Built-in Bred Talent, approached her, convincing her she could parlay her audition into a full-time job, she decided to drop out of school at 17 to pursue it every bit a career. Aside from a brief stint at McDonald's, she has never had any other job.
Like the others I speak to, Rory is often greeted by fans in public. "I'm then awkward to run across," she says. "I'm not an bad-mannered person, simply when someone's crying because I'thousand standing in front of them, it's just crazy that y'all can take that sort of impact on somebody's life."
Outside of TikTok, Rory describes her life as tranquillity. She lives at habitation with her parents near Newcastle in NSW. She makes a point of starting her day past making her bed. She plays guitar, sings and roller-skates: hobbies which have recently begun to brand their way into her videos. "I got bullied at school for doing TikTok," she says. As her audience grew, she found her friendship circle shrinking. "I've but got, like, i friend left," she says.
"Every bit much every bit people know that they have to put an try into creating their content, they attempt to also portray a more casual tone to things."
The first time Rory and I speak, via Zoom, she's sitting outside in the sun. With straight blonde hair, high cheekbones and full lips, she looks similar the paragon of an Instagram influencer. (Her TikTok fame has translated into a following of 165,000 on that platform.) But based on Rory's TikTok feed, she's clearly unconcerned about looking perfect and readily pokes fun at herself for comedic value. In various videos, she appears without make-up, in pyjamas, with wet hair or forces a double chin. "I find Instagram very dry … a little bit self-captivated sometimes," she says. "A lot of the photos are actually edited and it's like a faux life. TikTok is legit just people having fun."
She acknowledges that there's artifice on TikTok, too, just says content on the platform requires "a flake more personality, rather than just a mirror selfie".
What aspiration is to Instagram, relatability is to TikTok. Users of the video-sharing app engage in what Abidin calls "calibrated amateurism". "As much equally people know that they accept to put an attempt into creating their content, they try to likewise portray a more coincidental tone to things: assuasive bloopers to be in there, showing a confront without brand-upwards, inviting people into [their] bedrooms," she says.
When I visit Brooke Styles, a 25-yr-old TikToker at her family home in the Sunshine Declension hinterland, I'm struck by a strange sense of familiarity. When I get in, Brooke is sitting at her computer in her studio, a room I recognise from her videos: the curtains, a painted wall arch, desk, chair and sofa are all shades of pastel pink. The infinite, previously a garage, features a wall-mounted coil of pinkish (of course!) studio properties newspaper and is topped off by exposed wooden ceiling beams.
Brooke and her fiancé, Jake, renovated the studio themselves. They've redone many of the rooms in the house, which they share with Brooke's mum and sis, likewise as her 2 young cousins, who moved in with them when her aunt passed away. Brooke has documented the renovations on TikTok as well as DIY projects, including building a lawn charcoal-broil area and kitting out a xanthous van for road trips. The goal for her content, she says, is to be "a groovy version of Better Homes and Gardens".
Lifestyle videos are her mainstay, her account peppered with food and drink recipes, travel vlogs and styling videos. Later we conversation, Brooke shows me a stack of piece of furniture she has been buying from op shops for a series of "flips" – transforming or upcycling them – for TikTok.
Brooke was an Instagrammer before she joined TikTok in 2019. "I cruel out of love with Instagram," she says. She had gained some weight and was struggling with her trunk image and mental health. "It came to a point where it wasn't a creative thing whatsoever more for me; it was like a competition."
Initially, she felt similar a baffled millennial on TikTok. "These kids were doing crazy things," she says. "I was like, 'This is really entertaining to watch, I really want to be a function of this.' " After posting a few TikToks, one video of her dogs was viewed twenty,000 times, and she was hooked. It had taken Brooke six years to build a post-obit of 100,000 on Instagram. On TikTok, she gained the same audience in a calendar month. "It simply took me a year to hitting ane million. It was just and so quick and intense," she says.
At face value, beingness a famous TikToker might seem like a cushy career choice. But, says Clare Southerton, a engineering and social media researcher at the University of NSW, information technology requires a meaning input of creative labour. "The reality is that people who work in social media, in content creation, are workers; they're creating things that people savour," she says. "Information technology's similar a lot of artistic careers – not everybody can exist successful."
"Even if I want to casually curlicue social media, it turns into me thinking well-nigh work. In that location isn't really almanac leave or holidays for me."
The downside of social media is that, much like the news cycle, information technology never switches off. "I don't e'er finish thinking about it," says Brooke, who works seven days a week. "Even if I want to casually curl social media, it turns into me thinking nearly piece of work." Rory too feels force per unit area to post continually, although she tries to accept weekends off to spend time with her family unit. "There isn't really annual get out or holidays for me," she says.
TikTok's ability to captivate and galvanise young audiences hasn't been disregarded as a powerful marketing tool. All the TikTokers I speak to are paid by a diversity of brands to make advertising videos promoting products that bridge the gamut of fashion, beauty, fast food, music and more. Their fees are negotiated by their managers and, depending on the budget, they might exist required to mail service one or a series of TikToks, every bit well as posts on Instagram or Instagram Stories, which disappear after 24 hours.
No i is keen to comment on the record almost their salaries or private brand deals, but Rory tells me that for TikTok "influencers, who are in the millions of followers, their income is in the medium-to-high range of incomes in Australia". When I ask Rory about brand deals, she rattles off a pre-prepared listing that includes Fanta, Sportsgirl, the NSW Department of Education, Nissan, Baby G and Milo.
On a bye, she says, she might get five new briefs. "I've never had so much work earlier," Brooke tells me; she now earns more than her mum, who works in childcare management. And Jasmine, who works at the pharmacy and as a dance teacher, has kept those jobs primarily considering she enjoys their social aspects.
TikTok has had a particularly marked outcome on the music industry. Jasmine, for instance, has worked with both Warner Music and Sony Music to promote certain songs in her videos. Increasingly, the platform has become a launch pad for new music, which is heavily pushed by record labels through paid campaigns and trip the light fantastic trends that seem all but engineered for virality.
For a while last year, choreographed dances to The Weeknd'due south Blinding Lights and Drake's Toosie Slide were inescapable, while some musicians, similar John Mayer and former One Direction fellow member Niall Horan, mail musical instrumentals to the platform, encouraging their fans to duet their videos.
The app has even become something of a hitmaker, starting with Lil Nas X's Former Town Road in 2019. There'southward now a meaning overlap between the music that's trending on TikTok and the songs that are topping mainstream pop charts. Olivia Rodrigo, the xviii-year-old American actor and vocaliser, is arguably the biggest popular star in the world right at present considering of the platform. Her debut single, Drivers License, broke Spotify'southward tape for the most streams in a single week when it was released in January. She broke her ain record in May with another single, Adept 4 U. Back home in Australia, the TikTok popularity of 24-yr-erstwhile, Adelaide-born Shaylee Curnow, who performs nether the moniker Peach Communist china, somewhen led to a record bargain.
TikTok skews female: effectually 60 per cent of its user base, according to both Australian and American estimates. The app'due south biggest male person stars in Commonwealth of australia tend to be older and take already established audiences on other platforms: these include YouTubers such as Mullen Slay (x.2 one thousand thousand followers) and xxx-yr-old JoshDub (8.4 1000000 followers), who take gained an audience for their virtual reality gaming videos. 30-one-twelvemonth-one-time JoelBergs (half dozen.six million followers), who largely posts comedic reactions to viral videos, is another: he was previously a pop creator on Vine, a now-defunct short-video platform which had similarities to TikTok.
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Male TikTokers who have grown large audiences primarily on the app include the baby-faced Bijay Baniya (9.vii million), 25, a choreographer and dancer, and Melburnian Caleb Finn (ten.viii million), a old preschool teacher who, with his braces and drawn-on freckles, looks much younger than his 26 years.
TikTok'southward vast audiences take also created celebrities out of certain professionals, such every bit health workers and teachers, who use their TikTok videos to entertain, educate or drum up business. In Commonwealth of australia, these include Dr Daniel Aronov, a Melbourne-based cosmetic surgeon; Sally Prosser, a voice coach in Brisbane; and Gluey, a rock candy shop owned by David Male monarch, a former lawyer.
Equally TikTok has grown in popularity, the platform's cultural say-so has begun to extend beyond the sphere of teenagers. The platform is "ageing upwardly", Hunter tells me, without sharing specific demographic details. "We're seeing a lot of older users get on lath," he says.
As well as the airing of a broader range of content. In May, Scattered, a "serial" of 38 one-minute episodes co-created locally past Logan Mucha and Kate Derrigan, launched on the platform. A scripted and professionally shot madcap narrative detailing the exploits of three friends who steal their mate's ashes then accidentally lose them, the project has brought a highly polished cinematic offering to TikTok and is the first project of its kind to receive funding from Screen Australia. "Information technology's like The Hangover for Gen Z," Screen Australia'due south Lee Naimo told The Sydney Morning Herald. "There'due south a booming and growing audience [on the platform] looking for new things they tin't go elsewhere."
"For all generations, social-media platforms have an expiration appointment for when information technology's cool to be on them."
A widening user base suggests the app might exist effectually for the long booty, says Southerton, although TikTok'due south longevity is far from guaranteed. To date, it has already survived the existential threat of a potential ban in the US – last year, Donald Trump signed an executive social club finer banning the platform, although the social club was afterwards rescinded.
Plus, every bit Abidin puts information technology, "For all generations, social-media platforms have an expiration date for when information technology's cool to exist on them … you lot're probably non going to find many 18-year-olds who are voluntarily on Facebook, because it's an erstwhile people's platform [at present]."
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And then there are concerns – and an ongoing lawsuit in Europe – about how it collects data from users, especially given that and so many are so young. The data TikTok collects is adequately comparable to other social-media platforms, and less far-reaching than Facebook's policies, says Southerton. But, she says, there are valid privacy concerns almost immature people using the platform.
"Whatever time a child or young people are filming themselves, that's always a risk: that they might motion-picture show something that reveals where they alive, or reveal something about them that is individual," she says. "Simply every bit you would educate a kid non to put their address on Twitter, yous would teach them not to movie something that would reveal their location."
"If TikTok drops off the confront of the world, I will be quite lost," admits Rory, the next time I speak to her. Her blonde hair is at present streaked with pink. "I don't know anything else other than this and Macca'due south. I don't really accept any experience in the earth."
For more social interaction in her daily life, she's considering getting a part-time chore. She has decided to revamp both her look and her TikTok content, spurred past a recent, disheartening drop in her viewing statistics. While she used to easily rack up nearly half a million likes on a sketch video, lately she's finding that she'south "lucky to get twenty,000 likes". "When y'all don't encounter the traction, it makes yous nervous," she told fans in a live stream the calendar week earlier our chat. "This is my chore. What happens if it all dies? And so what?"
Information technology's a pertinent question: what happens when these young TikTokers have had their time in the sun? In the entertainment industries, the timespan separating the popular and the passĂ© was never long to brainstorm with, and it is rapidly shrinking in sync with online attention spans. From YouTubers to Instagrammers, exhaustion among online influencers is a common phenomenon, perhaps unsurprising given that always staying switched on is a requirement of the job – and that the chore, to some extent, requires commodifying oneself.
"I'm not that worried if TikTok doesn't terminal forever," says Brooke. She feels she has mastered what types of content gain her traction online, and believes she could transfer such content to other platforms if demand be.
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If social media didn't exist, Jasmine tells me, she would run across herself working in the film and Tv industry. "I do have plans to keep, hopefully, doing this kind of work for as long as I can," she says. "Only yeah, I guess you lot can never know."
Later, Rory is more than sanguine. "This is my passion," she says. "I'grand only then blessed to have the platform that I take." Feeling force per unit area to succeed and uncertainty about future career paths are, she recognises, mutual experiences. "I don't think it'due south merely influencers," she says. "That comes with any job."
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Source: https://www.smh.com.au/national/it-s-just-crazy-the-young-aussies-raking-it-in-on-tiktok-20210514-p57s34.html
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