Out of everyone in the house, Warren seems to make the most of the seemingly unlimited budget, as he admits to spending anywhere from $50,000 to $70,000 a month on his videos and pranks, making use of helicopters and ultra-expensive vehicles, as though he were making a blockbuster action film. “I just said it as a joke,” he says, as he inches nervously into the ring, cameras all around, filming everything. “You said you wanted this,” Warren tells a clearly terrified Hacker. Within the first few minutes of the first episode, a sumo wrestler is brought in by Alex Warren, the self-described “prank king”, to wrestle Hacker. These kids are also given enough money to turn any joke or fleeting whim into a reality. Most of these barely-adults, it turned out, were from broken homes too, and were easily enticed by the notion of getting to live rent-free in a McMansion amongst a simulacrum of community. Still, Petrou enlisted several of TikTok’s top-performing young creators to live and make money alongside him in his own Team 10 inspired house. Her older sister, Dixie, who was also in the Hype House, was reported to have made $10 million. These influencers can expect to make millions through TikTok: 17-year-old Charli D’Amelio –who went viral over 2019 for her competitive dance videos and who was one of the first collaborators to join Hype House in 2020 – earned $17.5m last year, making her the highest-paid TikToker of the year, according to estimates by Forbes magazine. Last year, members of the house alleged that they were “exploited” by Paul, who was controlling their income. Jake Paul, one of the internet’s most famous social media stars, has inspired plenty of controversy, and no less for Team 10, his own collaborator house. “I became friends with Jake Paul a few years ago and watching his success with Team 10 made me want to start my own content house,” he writes over email. He started Hype House in early 2020, when TikTok stardom was becoming conceivable as a full-time career. Hype House, which was also criticised over lockdown for hosting a birthday party with 70 people mid-pandemic, is principally the brainchild of 22 year-old Thomas Petrou, a young man from a “broken home” who appears almost single-mindedly entrepreneurial. One such collaborator house, Sway House, was described by the Los Angeles mayor of creating a “party war zone”, and, after video footage of these parties emerged on Instagram, the mayor even disconnected the house's utilities. Over lockdown, the internet was awash with stories about these frat-style houses of teens hosting parties that would enrage the neighbours. During filming for the show, a dozen-or-so social media influencers and content creators lived here for free, on the condition that they make and post TikToks if not constantly, then at least several times daily, intermittently filming with the energy drink brand in hand.Ĭollaborator houses such as this one have been a popular model for young social media influencers and creators since the advent of Clout House in 2018, when a group of YouTubers came together with the shared vision to expand their audience base by pooling together, and to live each waking moment in service of – the biggest buzzword – “content”. Based in the relatively secluded area of Moorpark in Los Angeles, the $5 million mansion functions like a warped kind of dystopian, capitalist commune (rent is paid for by energy drinks company Bang). “Hype House” is both a brand (its TikTok channel has over 19 million followers, and for a while it had its own merchandise) and a real place. “Now we have more money than anyone should ever have,” he says, staring down the camera during a confessional in the penultimate episode of Hype House, Netflix’s dreary lens into the life of a collective of young, professional TikTok-ers who live and work together. “We were once just kids posting on an app, not caring how many followers we had,” says Vinnie Hacker, an 18 year-old who blew up on TikTok virtually overnight after posting “thirst traps” (shirtless, unsubtly suggestive videos).
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