Troy Zarba

Troy Juliano Zarba is a young American TikTok star who has accrued over 3.6 million fans on the platform and nearly 210 million likes for his content. This makes him one of the 1000 most popular people on TikTok, which is no mean feat when you consider some of the celebrity names on there and that there are currently over 66 million other people all vying for attention. Zarba is also popular on Instagram where he can boast over 740,000 followers. One of the reasons for his success is the originality of his content, which as well as being very funny and relatable, plays around with the visual language of the viral video form; this has led to him being hailed as the “King of the Transition”. In September 2021, he released his debut song, ‘4am’.

Zarba was born in Long Island in 2002, a time when social media meant chatting with your mates on MSN Messenger. He began making TikTok videos shortly after installing the app on his phone and thinking that it might be something interesting to get into. Soon enough, an audience was gathering around his lip-sync videos and inventive transition methods. His unique, bang-on-point personal style also helped (a keen thrift store shopper, he can often be seen touting vintage 1990s threads).

By 2020, Zarba had reached the point that every social media star dreams of getting to – the point where you move to Los Angeles. He is still there, still making engaging content, and as his debut track suggests, looking at horizons beyond TikTok.