The amounts that creators make by demographic are not publicly shared by social media sites, including TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, according to Jasmine Enberg, a principal analyst at the digital marketing research company Insider Intelligence. I think that’s rude.” Gerard backed her up. “I worked my butt off to get where we are. Still, she bristled when a viewer recently commented that “mixed families become famous for being mixed families,” not an uncommon perception among minority creators and users. They recently bought a house to rent out as an Airbnb.Īlyssa said she is astonished that her vlog has become such a moneymaker. Gerard and Alyssa Fluellen The California couple hope to use their TikTok profits to start small family businesses. Not long after, Gerard left his position as a UPS truck driver, as brands including Pottery Barn, Athleta and Walmart forged partnerships with the couple. Alyssa quit her job as a registered nurse to focus on the family TikTok full-time. The Fluellens, who now have 3.2 million followers, said they made in the low six figures in 2021 and this year they foresee topping $1 million. The income - from brand partnerships and TikTok’s Creator Fund, which pays creators a small amount based on viewership and other factors - helps balance the insults. “I was telling Gerard the other day that I get emotional when I think about the amount of support I get from Black women,” particularly the first time she braided her daughters’ hair, Alyssa said. Lately, she has been trying harder to focus on the fact that the positive comments are more plentiful (even more so after the couple tweaked the platform’s settings to weed out the worst). “I still don’t think it’s right, but it helped me understand,” Alyssa said. “We all express our pain in different ways.” In the case of Black women, “I feel like historically, have gotten the short end of the stick,” and seeing him with a White wife could be perceived as an affront, Gerard, 31, said, echoing his sister’s first reaction to their romance. Gerard, who said he developed thick skin while growing up in Redlands, a predominantly White Southern California city about 50 miles from Victorville, counseled Alyssa on how not to let others’ opinions bother her. (David McNew for The Washington Post)Īfter she and Gerard posted a video mocking the skin care routines she’d need to stay youthful as a White woman because “Black don’t crack,” some Black women admonished Gerard that he should have stuck to dating within his race. They have more than 3 million followers on TikTok. Others report reeling from the insults.Īlyssa Fluellen, her husband Gerard, and children, Emmett, 1, Harper, 3, and Hayden, 6, play together at their home in Victorville, Calif. “So you kind of get used to that, you know?”Īs a performer, Amber said she is used to handling occasional hostility, usually by ignoring it. “Even if we went on a nice date” with no references to race at all “there will be some comments about that that would be race-based,” said Amber, who lives in Chicago. The narrative tension born of slavery and segregation is embedded in the images even before the couples speak, Schroeder noted. Yet as much as the couples may attempt to positively influence their followers’ perceptions of race, the nation’s long-tortured relationship with the topic often hijacks the script. In a country where interracial marriage was illegal in 16 states before the 1967 Supreme Court decision in Loving v. They grab the mic and tell their own stories.” “Ordinary people without access to power are able to build worldwide audiences with millions of followers. “That’s what’s so dynamic about social media,” said Jonathan Schroeder, a communications professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology who researches the ethics of gender and racial representation in commercial imagery, including digital media. This time, however, real-world interracial couples like the Wallins are able to present the narratives of their lives directly to the masses. The influencers are just the latest pop culture depiction of interracial romance, beginning with the groundbreaking 1967 film “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” right up through the racial pairings on television shows like “Scandal” and “Bridgerton.”
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