When Jack Shannon entered his freshman year of college, he was looking forward to making new friends.
What he didn’t expect was how he would end up doing it.
Within his first few weeks of school, the Saint Charles native who is studying information systems became a viral sensation on TikTok.
It all started when he saw a fellow TikToker, Christian Works, entering dorm rooms at Cortland and performing a dance.
“I was like, ‘Oh, I want to do this.’ So I did it once and it was like a normal video for like, I don’t know, a day or two. And then it started blowing up out of nowhere,” Shannon told NBC Chicago.
The video quickly shot up to millions of views and Shannon was suddenly surprised at what came next.
“People were like sending me messages like, ‘Oh, come to my dorm, come to my dorm, come to my dorm’ … So I was like, ‘Oh, like, people actually want to see this stuff … I was doing it as a joke, like I thought it’d just be funny for like my friends to see and stuff. But people wanted me to start doing it more. So I was like, ‘All right, I’ll keep doing it, I guess.’”
Shannon and his roommate set out each night to fulfill those requests. And with each video he posted, Shannon continued to see millions of views.
Big-name brands even started taking notice, with comments from accounts like Special K and more. Classmates began recognizing him as he knocked on their doors, joining him in his dance.
“People are asking me for pictures and I’m like, ‘Wow, you really want my picture? That’s crazy,’” Shannon said.
Shannon never let his followers think his idea was original, however.
“The guy who originally did it followed me back because I’ve been following him. And then I was texting him like, ‘Hey, I got this off you.’ So I started tagging him in the comments, giving him credit. And I mean, now we’re good friends off of that,” Shannon said.
Shannon said he has no plans currently to take his TikTok stardom beyond these videos, but he plans to keep doing them as long as his classmates and others enjoy them.
“I want to keep doing them because I want to meet more people,” he said. “Like that’s the coolest thing I think. It’s like meet a bunch of people and like obviously, you know, it’s really cool that a bunch of people like outside of the school are liking my videos, but I also just get to build like connections because I’m still a freshman here, like I don’t really know that many people. But I mean, even if it’s like people recognize me first I still get to meet people and know their names and stuff like that so I want to keep doing them.”
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