Photo by Andrew Lipovsky / NBC / NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
Charli D’Amelio is the first TikTok creator to hit 100 million followers. She’s the first by some distance, too — only two other creators have cracked 50 million. On TikTok, that makes her more than twice as big as Will Smith, three times as big as The Rock, four times as big as Selena Gomez, and five times as big as Kylie Jenner and Ariana Grande.
It also means she reached 100 million subscribers in record time. On YouTube, it took 14 years before any channel hit 100 million. D’Amelio only started posting to TikTok in May 2019, and the app has only been available (under its current branding, at least) since August 2018.
The Verge is an ambitious multimedia effort founded in 2011