The clip didn’t take off. “I didn’t really get a lot of views,” says Evelyn. “But I guess that was owed to me being very camera-shy and awkward.” Inspired by her influencer “idols” like Katie Fang, she kept at it. A couple months after Evelyn posted her first video, a conversation with a friend about “things that made them mad” inspired her to organize her thoughts more succinctly. So began the rise and rise of her now-famous, sarcasm-laden Get Ready With Me-style franchises: Things That I Don’t Understand (“Time. Who decided there were 24 hours in a day?”), Things That Are Literally Disgusting (“People who barely wash their water bottles…”), Things That Annoy Me (“When a teacher separates your group for being distracting…”), and Things That I Hate (“When TikTok bans me for no reason…”).
Oh, yeah, about that last thing… We’ll get to that in a minute.
Evelyn’s videos soon began to pick up speed in the way only TikTok videos can. The formula for her virality looked something like this: brutally honest observations divided by deadpan delivery plus beauty products minus the fluffy commentary that usually goes with them. “I felt like I wanted to do a short video that gets to the point and says a lot,” says Evelyn, who shows the products she uses on camera, logos up, but doesn’t discuss them in detail. (Brands like Drunk Elephant, Glow Recipe, Supergoop, and Saie make frequent appearances in her videos.)
Whether she knows it or not, Evelyn has created a master class in product placement. But she’s smart—it’s hard to imagine she doesn’t know it. “In the beginning of [making] my videos, I would wake up and immediately just go to primer and makeup,” she recalls. But to get more engagement, she says, she “evolved” to using skin care in the mornings.
“It also just built a healthy habit. Even now, when I’m not filming videos for TikTok in the morning, I still do my morning skin care,” says Evelyn, who started wearing mascara at age 10. Now, on any given day, she uses primer, foundation, concealer, undereye brightener, contour, highlighter, finishing powder, mascara, and blush. (“I use my Rare Beauty blush, which won the Allure award, right?” Like we said, smart.)