Living on Vancouver Island can often feel a bit isolated from the outside world, especially when it comes to social media culture—I mean, when’s the last time Ariana Grande came here on tour? When did Rhode have a Victoria pop-up? Or when have you spotted Addison Rae on Fort Street? You’re probably not surprised that none of these things actually happened, and if you willingly chose to live here, you’re probably fine with it. Yet if you were an aspiring influencer back in the TikTok craze of 2020, and the only foreseeable way to grow your career was to move to the action, this predicament just might flip your life upside down.
That’s exactly what happened to Brooklynne Webb, a 16-year-old girl from Victoria, B.C., in 2020 who randomly went viral on TikTok. Her lifestyle actually relied on how many celebs she could collaborate with, how many followers she could keep, and how she could stay at the top of your “For You Page” —the solution? Moving to Los Angeles. Webb’s success followed her tenacity, but the industry took its toll, and she now finds herself happier than ever back home in Victoria, B.C., with nothing short of a unique story. Webb is now doing a bit of all the things she loves most—working an in-person job, promoting body positivity, self-love, health, and the occasional transition video—and although her bio states she has retired, she’s still posting for her 10.2 Million followers…
Her Campus UVic writer Calista Phillips talked with Brooklynne Webb in an exclusive interview.
It all began with some TikTok videos that were simply a joke—“everyone else” was doing it in high school, says Webb. Her musical theatre and dance passions needed a creative outlet, and TikTok was just that. “I started with silly little POV’s,” smiles Webb.
In April of 2020, the pursuit of Webb’s influencer dream became serious when her follower count rose from twenty thousand to over one million in one month alone. At the time, she thought, “Whoa, whoa, okay, I’m gaining some traction, but I think it’s gonna slow down now.” When it didn’t slow down, though, her plan to finish high school was outweighed by living in L.A. as a full-time content creator.
Before leaving Canada, Webb had befriended a group of fellow influencers online. Through group chats and video calls, the 17- to 22-year-olds decided L.A. was in their immediate future, and by September of 2020, Webb accepted one of many inquiries from social media managers to organize the financial portion of the job. “I just knew that that was where I needed to be,” says Webb.
An early video contrasts Webb’s fame with “realistically planning to work in fast food for the rest of [her] life.” While Webb has certainly proven she has so much more to give the world, the career opportunity was undoubtedly thrilling (who wouldn’t want to move to L.A. to make TikToks for a living?).
Fast forward through many viral POV’s, collabs, and dancing videos, Webb was living a 24/7 storm of viral videos, manager meetings, brand deals, magazine shoots, and collaborations, and the load wasn’t getting lighter. At this point in 2021, an irrational stream of hate emerged, which only escalated. Not only was this hate toward Webb’s body-positivity content, but toward other content creators too, specifically when they released music of all things. “[releasing music was] something that, for whatever reason, grinded people’s gears,” Webb says, despite a lot of the songs being “not fundamentally bad.”
As a response to the relentless internet trolls, she decided it was time to put her long-devised satire-song concept into action. “What if I made a song that was just good enough to be believable, but bad and silly enough that people would get their panties in a twist,” says Webb. (You might recall the song “My Crown” on your TikTok feed in 2021?)
Although her managers’ initial reaction was “you are not doing this,” recalls Webb, the idea proved successful toward its goal: on its release date of Dec. 8, 2021 “My Crown” was streamed over 850,000 times, and got one million views in 24 hours—just as Webb anticipated, the views were primarily hate, but they were still views.
On Dec. 18, one day after the full album hit Spotify (an album entirely consisting of “My Crown” remixes), Webb released a YouTube video titled “HOW TROLLING GAVE ME A MUSIC CAREER” exposing the joke, the process, and the reasoning. She explained her hope that haters would spend less time on negativity and more on building others up, such as artists they actually enjoyed. “You could have put that energy into something positive,” concludes the video.
As the “My Crown” era faded into early 2022, Webb felt a new pressure to be herself, knowing this was her chance to “break free” from the character of sorts she had been playing. “You’re creating a curated image of yourself, no matter how authentic you think you’re being on social media,” says Webb. She wanted people to see she was more than her online persona.
“I didn’t know who I was, but I had this pressure of needing to know,” says Webb. This point in time also saw many other creators rebranding—“[creators] got more distant and close within their circles, and focused on themselves,” says Webb. She couldn’t take her character any further, and in order to stay relevant, she needed something new, like a podcast or a book. “I had this big success to piggyback off of, but I just didn’t know,” says Webb.
Her direction in L.A. was unclear at this point. “I think a lot of the bright and shininess of the COVID-era definitely started to wear off, and real life started to hit a bit more,” says Webb. As the community of influencers faded, life started to feel lonely.
“Even though I had it all in L.A., getting out of bed in the morning was a really, really, really hard struggle,” said Webb.
Over a year later, on a trip back home to Victoria, Webb recalls, “I had the biggest realization of my life, and for the first time in a while, people were actually present in conversations.” The simplicities of life grew back into her appreciation, and she felt happier, opposite to L.A., where it often felt like people wanted to get something from social situations. The trip only lasted three weeks, though, and Webb fell back into a recurring depression back in L.A.
On Mar. 14, 2024, Webb permanently moved back to Victoria, and has since transformed her lifestyle—she’s found consistent happiness, become a gym girly, worked a retail job, and has just applied for yet another job—and now she posts content for herself.
Getting her spark back was no walk in the park, though, and yet Webb has remarkably committed to staying authentic; she openly discusses her mental health journey, her ongoing struggles, her highs and lows, and most recently, her journey to sobriety. Despite all the “baggage” she brought back to Canada, Webb doesn’t have any regrets (even “My Crown”). She does, however, warn eager content creators, “It’s definitely not as easy or as glamorous as it seems.”
While some may see just one more cringy retired influencer, ‘xobrooklynne’ is more accurately the story of a brave teenager from a small island in Canada with an iPhone and a dream, who wasn’t afraid to drop out of highschool, move to another country at 17, post content to uplift every girl who doesn’t feel pretty, live through a pandemic alone, work through mental health struggles, and continue to document that for her 10.2 million followers (most of which were only following for a good laugh). Oh, and also come out empowered to be her most authentic self.