Dallas’ Brittany Tomlinson’s Kombucha Reaction TikTok Is Twitter’s Latest Meme

Brittany Tomlinson's TikTok video has been turned into Twitter's latest meme. The Dallas native who works in banking said she uploaded her video reaction to drinking Kombucha on TikTok about two weeks ago, but was shocked when it started catching steam on Twitter.


The 22-year-old says she's been making videos on Snapchat since high school, and the Kombucha reaction video was a leftover one from that app.

We chatted with the viral TikTok-er on what it's like to go viral.

When did you make the TikTok?
I've been making stupid little videos like that since the beginning of high school but on Snapchat. And TikTok has only been around for a year. So I downloaded it like a month ago and I started posting my old Snapchats on there. So the Kombucha video, I originally filmed on Snapchat. It was like a two-minute thing just of me talking about it and trying it and obviously the reaction. So I took that little clip and uploaded it to TikTok not even two weeks ago. The rest is history. It's been crazy.

When did you first notice it blowing up?
When it made it over to Twitter. Because it got maybe 15,000 likes on TikTok, which is pretty common for my channel, but I got sent a tweet from I think @popstardave on Twitter and it had like a million views and he captioned it something nasty. I was like, "Oh, my god, he stole my video." So I messaged him. I was like, hey man, that's my video. He was so cool and gave me credit. People just kept taking his tweet and circulating it with a new caption and it has been so funny. People are so creative.

What's been your favorite caption?
I think the most relatable one is "Me when I tried alcohol for the first time" because it's just so on-the-nose.

Were you on Vine when that was around?
I was, but I was 17, so my humor was not the level that it is today. I didn't have much success on Vine, but TikTok is literally the new Vine. It's super exciting.

How many followers do you have on TikTok?
I uploaded my video from Snapchat on TikTok and it went viral overnight. It was a depression meal-type thing, and apparently a bunch of people found it relatable because overnight —  I posted it at 9 p.m. and I woke up the next morning and someone told me my video was on Reddit. It had like 20,000 likes and 500,000 views, literally in the span of 12 hours. I think right now I'm sitting at 160,000 followers, couple of million views. It's just crazy.

What is it like going viral? Is it all a high? Any low moments?
You gotta have thick skin, which luckily I do. Because I've been told I look like Buzz Lightyear, Owen Wilson, people are so brutally honest. You have to have a good sense of humor about it. At first, I was like I can't believe this is happening. All of my friends are texting me. And then it got to a point where I was like, "If I see my own video one more time, I'm going to explode." Like, it's so not funny anymore to me, but I'm glad people are enjoying it. It's just weird.

Is there a pressure now to make something better?
Absolutely, because I think it's weird. It did so well on Twitter and I feel like Twitter and TikTok — all of the social media platforms have different senses of humor for what goes viral. Something can do really well on TikTok but it's not the same demographic that thinks it's funny as Twitter and that's kind of what I'm running into. A lot of the captions on Twitter were adult-based and TikTok kind of has a more high school to college sense of humor, so I think the in-between is — I'm making a YouTube channel because my friends have been telling me to do it for years and I was like, "Well, I guess it's time."

Is it a goal to quit banking and do social media full time?
You know, I don't know. I like my job, but I mean this is definitely something that people have been in my ear about since I was 15. It's flattering, but it's always that confidence struggle of, "Will I be successful on an app with Jenna Marbles and all of these super famous creators?" And I'm getting the feeling of like, "Man, I really could if I try." I don't have any plans of quitting my job anytime soon.