In each edition of web_crawlr we have exclusive original content every day. On Tuesdays our IRL Reporter Tricia Crimmins breaks down the trends on the popular app that will make you cringe in her “Problematic on TikTok” column. If you want to read columns like this before everyone else, subscribe to web_crawlr to get your daily scoop of internet culture delivered straight to your inbox.
The internet is obsessed with glow ups, or a significant improvement in one’s looks. TikTok’s #glowup hashtag has been used in almost 14 million videos, and some users have even solicited TikToks advice on how to glow up.
“How can I be prettier be [for real],” one TikToker asked viewers in a June 2023 viral video. “I don’t want compliments.”
Commenters suggested the TikToker get a new haircut, highlights, and additional nose piercings. Five days later, she returned to TikTok sporting new hair and a full face of makeup to show TikTok their suggestions worked.
It’s TikToks like these that inspired glow up-focused accounts to advise TikTokers on how they can improve their looks.
But one such account, @TheGlowUpGirl, has come under fire after editing TikTokers videos to make it look like they asked TikTok for glow up advice and giving them appearance-based suggestions—even though those TikTokers didn’t ask for beauty pointers.
TikToker Richard Han, whose account thisyou.official2 exposes TikTokers for their shady actions, posted a video about @TheGlowUpGal over the weekend, accusing her of adding text to TikTokers videos to make it look like they’ve asked for glow up advice.
“How can I glow up? Be brutally honest,” @TheGlowUpGal’s video says a TikToker asked in their video.
But Han showed the TikToker’s real video—and she didn’t ask for any comments on her appearance.
Han alleges that @TheGlowUpGal has falsified many people’s TikToks to make them look like they’re soliciting advice and shows the original, unaltered videos to prove it.
“Who are you to tell people what to do hiding behind a screen,” Han wrote in his TikTok about @TheGlowUpGal. “Stop scamming people.”
Commenters on Han’s video called @TheGlowUpGal evil, sick, and backhanded. One even said that they’d received an unsolicited makeover from @TheGlowUpGal which resulted in a digitally altered photo that looked nothing like them.
Why it matters
@TheGlowUpGal’s ruse assumes two untrue things: That TikTokers want her advice even though they didn’t ask for it, and that everyone wants to glow up according to her standards.
But in actuality, she’s just cyberbullying TikTokers under the guise of offering them advice on their looks.
