Superstar influencer and teen sensation Charli D’Amelio became the first person to gain 100 million followers on TikTok on November 23, just over a year and a half after joining the platform. The 16-year-old hit the milestone figure ahead of the world’s biggest celebrities and the YouTubers, Instagrammers and Vine stars who preceded her.

While this year has been rough for most, D’Amelio has had an extraordinary 2020 by anyone’s standards — never mind a teenage schoolgirl who little over a year ago was just filming dance videos in her bedroom. Not only has her profile on the app grown exponentially from just 1 million followers a year ago, but her career outside of TikTok has also exploded.

Among her accolades, this year D’Amelio made her feature film debut; launched nail polish, makeup and fashion collaborations with major brands; appeared in a Super Bowl commercial; had a Dunkin’ Donuts drink named after her and appeared in a music video with her hero, J-Lo. Her first book, “Essentially Charli: The Ultimate Guide to Keeping It Real,” comes out next month, and she is also investing in a banking app for teens. A Forbes report published in August suggested D’Amelio had earned US$4 million in the past year.

D’Amelio hasn’t just carved out a new and unexpected career for herself, but for her whole family. Big sister Dixie is embarking on a music career, her mom and dad have followings of their own, and they all post content on their family and individual YouTube channels.

If you’re unfamiliar with her content, you might be wondering what D’Amelio does that warrants such adulation and popularity. The answer is hard to put a finger on — even for those who’ve been watching closely, and even for D’Amelio herself.

It was clear she tapped into the authenticity that TikTok users crave. “It is precisely her ordinariness that is the key to her success,” says Zoe Glatt, a digital anthropologist and critical intersectional feminist researcher at London School of Economics. “With her pretty girl-next-door vibe, she exemplifies the ideal package for a TikToker: relatable, authentic, normatively attractive, youthful, fun, unthreatening and uncontroversial.”

The qualities of authenticity and relatability that audiences seek in influencers are often elusive, says Brooke Erin Duffy, an associate professor at Cornell University who studies media, technology and culture. “However, we shouldn’t overlook the roles of both luck and privilege in the production of celebrity,” she says.

But although her rise to fame looks like the social media fairytale come true, it isn’t all brand deals and sunshine.

TikTok stardom is rife with pitfalls and opportunities for cancelation. Rarely does a day go by without a scandal, which can range from the trivial (a relationship drama, an ego-driven beef) to the genuinely serious (racism, older influencers grooming fans who are minors). D’Amelio has been largely immune to this.

What she isn’t immune to is the jealousy and bullying that come with superstardom. The biggest threat to her right now is overexposure — people are getting so tired of waiting for her to trip up that they’re imposing impossibly high standards on her and then claiming she’s fallen short.

In an Instagram Live, D’Amelio reacted in tears to the mean comments, saying: “I don’t even know if I want to do this anymore. This is messed-up stuff that people are saying — like people telling me to hang myself. [The fact that] people just blatantly disrespecting the fact that I’m still a human being is not OK at all.”

But she also bounced back quickly, tweeting: “Tomorrow I will be back with a smile on my face! At the end of the day I know I am a good person with a good heart and I will never change that about myself. Love you all!!”

Such resilience will serve her well if she’s to survive in the ruthless world of Internet fame. (SD-Agencies)