I’m sorry. The old Brooklynne Webb can’t come to the phone right now. Why? Oh, ’cause she’s dead.
Better known as @xobrooklynne on TikTok, the 17-year-old built her brand with body-positive content and some POV princess videos. But don’t try to put her in a box, especially now. For the past month, her focus has been promoting her new single “My Crown” all over her page. It’s a song dedicated to all of her haters—and wow did they show up.
Her comment section was greeted with “You’re going places girl. Not a studio but places,” ”the amount of autotune is so painful,” and “great hidden talent. Keep it hidden.” It seemed that her single was just another thing for the trolls to grasp onto but she seemed to not notice, dueting and leaving comments on cringe-worthy videos making fun of her. Her response “TYSM for liking my song,” took on a world of its own and was used by trolls to taunt her.
But then a surprise on Friday—her full album was released. Fourteen tracks of the same song remixed in different ways from dance club to Broadway.
Turns out she wasn’t the joke at all. She crafted the whole thing and TikTok fell for it.
“It was actually my roommate’s idea,” Webb tells the Daily Dot. “Just to get a bit of reaction—satire.”
It certainly did just that. The more people hated the idea of another TikTok star releasing music the more they commented and the more they commented the larger the audience grew. Everyone was doing exactly what Webb thought they would.
“I knew exactly every joke that I was making,” she says. “People thought I was being dumb but I knew exactly what I was doing.”
Her song did more than get a reaction. It was a genius marketing move and “My Crown” has made its way up on the music charts, hitting No. 71 in the U.S. this weekend.
The attention empowered her to maybe be even more open on TikTok. While she has certainly shared pieces of herself, we don’t know her story except for the little excerpts she gives us here and there.
Despite her 10 million followers, it is just recently that the star feels she can show her personality more because people might actually care. Before her focus was to “be entertaining instead of myself.”
So we can expect to see more videos possibly hitting on more personal topics or showing even more sides of the star. But one thing we likely won’t see: more music.
“I don’t think I will ever do music again,” she confirms.
Webb admits she doesn’t really understand why she is often a target of bullying. It’s something that has increased on the platform over her two years on it.
“I’m just a young girl being happy and confident in what I’m doing and not listening to other people,” she says. “So I think a lot of people want to see if they’re the one that can break me.”
Instead of breaking her, they have fueled her brand. Once known as TikTok’s sweetheart, she is now a marketing mastermind and people can’t look away. She is now living in L.A. working as a full-time creator and living out her dream. A dream she says she wouldn’t have even imagined a year ago.
“I’m going to keep working all the time because I don’t want to ever take it for granted,” she says.
