Bryce Hall's 15 Seconds of Fame, by the Numbers
BRYCE HALL'S mission is to go viral—at any personal cost. He pranks himself, mocks others, pranks himself more. He says “bro”—a lot. Lest you forget what he stands for, there’s the line of branded merch to buy and energy drinks to guzzle. Those would be Party Animal and Ani.
“I practice authenticity,” Hall says, although he deploys the phrase like a general disclaimer. “I put out everything so that the toxic world of cancel culture can’t cancel me, because I already say it myself.” The result is more than 12 million followers on TikTok, with millions more on YouTube, and even his own invitation to a viral-hit-making incubator: He resides at Sway House, a sort of modern frat for influencers, who live together in Los Angeles to collaborate whenever.
If Hall comes off as everything wrong in the world, you probably didn’t grow up at a time when follower counts and spon-con became #goals for the young and entrepreneurial. It’s hard to say where exactly Hall falls in the social-media hero-to-villain spectrum. He’s not challenging the pope to boxing matches, but he’s also not using his platform to fight inequality or injustice. He’s just the latest iteration of a PG-13 bad boy, flexing hard for his mostly female fan base.
In seven years, that always-on, rarely filtered persona, splashed across sharing platforms like Vine that rose and fell with Hall’s own life, has also forced him to think more about how to catch fire without spontaneously combusting.
Here are eight numbers that chart his virtual climb to IRL stardom.
Hall’s age in 2014 when he first began posting comedy videos to Vine, the six-second-video blogging platform, from his hometown of Ellicott City, Maryland. He chased trending challenges, which led to jumping into snowbanks in his boxers, and mocked his own awkward attempts at dancing. “My first Vine went pretty viral,” he says. “Up until Vine went under, I had 30,000 followers.”
Amount in dollars of Hall’s first paycheck from the live-streaming platform YouNow, in 2015. “I was 15 years old. I was like, ‘What the heck? Why did I just get $2,500?’ My mom was confused. I was confused. I realized, even though I love talking to fans and creating content, you could get paid. That’s even better.”
Number of views to date of his first TikTok video, in September 2019: a nine-second clip of him dancing to a song by viral rapper Haiti Babii. “Before TikTok, I was watching these TikTokkers blow up. I was like, ‘What are these kids doing that I’m not doing?’ I invited a few influencers over, and they were telling me to hop on it. Turns out I’m pretty good at it.”
Number of square feet in the Sway House, a six-bedroom mansion in Los Angeles where Hall has broadcast from alongside six other young male TikTok and YouTube influencers since early 2020. “There are other houses,” he says. “There are a lot of creators and a lot of competition. There are people that are trying to get to number one. And social media evolves every six months, maybe even sooner. You have to evolve and adapt.”
Average number of tweets, Instagram posts, and YouTube and TikTok videos he uploads per day, often including his roommates as collaborators or punchlines. “Consistency is everything. With TikTok, we go through our ‘For You’ page, scroll down to find a trending thing or trending challenge, and just do it.” One of his most popular videos, at 42 million views, shows him dancing in sync with another influencer, Addison Rae, to a song by producer Monte Booker.
5,000
Amount in dollars of Hall’s bail money. In May, he was arrested in Lee County, Texas, with Jaden Hossler, a Sway House member at the time, for possession of marijuana. He’s talked about “getting sober,” although he admits he still drinks occasionally. “[Before my arrest] I just felt unstoppable. Now my mind feels clear. Waking up without a hangover is the best feeling in the world.”
12 million+
Number of followers on TikTok. Some posts play into a soap-opera-worthy subplot involving his on-and-off relationship with Rae, with whom he shares fans. “It does feel like I’m a zoo animal. It sucks that I can’t go out in public [without] people videotaping me and paparazzi asking me personal questions that I don’t feel comfortable putting out there for everyone.”
0
Number of concerns he has about President Drumpf’s proposed ban on the Chinese-backed TikTok over privacy issues. “A lot more of my time is going to be freed up. I have other platforms. Five years from now, I still see myself creating content. I just want to build multimillion-dollar companies.”
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