What appeared to be just a jokey clapback aimed at a person claiming to work “100 hours a week” turned out to unveil a terrible incident involving the man who took to TikTok to boast of his work ethic.
The video in question comes from creator The Paul McComas, who recently stitched a video from a man in a hardhat to give his own views on work. The video, which doesn’t display a TikTok username, shows the man with the on-screen caption, “If you work less than 100 hours a week lower your tone when you talk to me.”
With only 168 hours in a week, that led McComas to provide some math for his followers, getting nearly a million views in the process since going up with it last Wednesday.
@thepaulmccomas51 #shorts ♬ original sound – The Paul McComas
“Who the f*ck wants to work 100 hours a week?” the creator observes. “Like, seriously, that barely leaves you enough time to eat, sleep… and I sh*t. I sh*t a lot. That’s really cutting back on the sh*tting time.”
His accompanying caption read, “100 Hours A Week Working & You Think That’s A Flex,” and people coming to the video agreed.
“I never understood glorifying working our lives away,” said one representative commenter.
“It’s not the flex they think it is,” another remarked.
It also, according to iFunny, became a meme that underscored it wasn’t quite the flex the tireless worker wanted it to be.
There’s a more insidious backstory entangled in the video, though, revealed in July 2021 via a TikTok from internet muckracker TizzyEnt. In that video, he and another TikToker were able to follow the internet breadcrumbs, deducing the man in the hardhat was a self-described “motivated mud engineer” named Colten.
@tizzyent Get ready for some pipping hot tea. Credit to @__hypedad ♬ original sound – TizzyEnt
Colten, according to a KWTX-TV report, was “facing manslaughter and DWI charges after the pickup truck he was driving early Friday morning struck and killed his girlfriend.” The report noted he was detained by College Station, Texas, police and remained in the “Brazos County Detention Center on bonds that total $32,000” at the time of the report.
TizzyEnt highlighted key elements of the case, including that “the couple had been arguing earlier that night while they were at a dance hall in Huntsville,” and that “their argument reportedly continued on the drive back to College Station”—about a hour’s drive.
“So you’re on here flexing your job,” TizzyEnt assessed, “talking about how other people are lazy, how you’re paying other people’s welfare, when just barely a year ago, you’re responsible for taking another person’s life—someone you claimed to love and care about … do they have to build a new special wing in Hell for that?”
TizzyEnt’s video went on to be discussed on the Reddit subreddit TikTokCringe, with one user speaking for others with the assessment, “I truly didn’t see this ending like that.”
Another with self-reported oil field experience broke down the “100-hour” workweek a little further: “I can tell you all he is working a 12 hour day and probably counting an hour drive each way to work. Most likely he is working an 84 hour work week (12hr tour), eating at the company canteen for free and getting his laundry done every night for free for 2 weeks at a time or maybe 3 weeks at a time.”
Though there’s not news coverage of the criminal case beyond the arrest, a civil case involving the death appears to have been resolved in Colten’s favor. This according to a March 2023 post from Austin-based law firm Hanna & Plaut, LLP.
The Daily Dot has reached out to the creator via TikTok comment and to College Station police via email.
