Brandon Baum

We might think of TikTok as a primarily American thing, but young Brit Brandon Baum is more than holding his own on the platform. Still in his early twenties, he became a multi-millionaire during lockdown thanks to his TikTok video-magic shorts and behind-the-scenes tutorials, playing with effects to make it seem like he’s cut his own hand off or turned a London landmark into a pint of lager. Describing himself as a “Hogwarts dropout”, he has amassed over 2.2 million followers on TikTok and nearly 60 million likes for his content. He also has close to 2.5 million YouTube subscribers and his content on there has been watched a mind-blowing 2.1 billion times.

It was on YouTube that Baum first started uploading content, launching his channel in 2011 when he was just 12 years old. He’d already enjoyed some success at building an audience pre-lockdown, and he’d also dropped out of college to work for a production company. But with the pandemic sending everyone home and giving rise to all kinds of unlikely social media stars, Baum’s follower, like, and view counts shot through the roof. This in turn forced him to focus — he made, edited, and uploaded one video every day — and to start thinking bigger, despite all the restrictions, and so his videos also became more ambitious.

With the launch of YouTube shorts in November 2020, Baum was able to get his work into the feeds of even more people. Now a full-time content creator, he is one of those whose careers was launched during lockdown.