Hank joins TikTok and posts several TikToks a day (2020)
story · status: told 5×, last update 2026 · last event: update (2026-02-15)
Hank started making TikToks in 2020 and was soon posting several a day, growing to 7 million followers; by 2024 the platform had stopped being fun for him.
Told alongside: Hank's Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosis and chemotherapy (2023) · Hank's rebranding away from being the corndog-loving brother (2021)
About: TikTok
| date | event | what | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-07-17 | told | When there is a new way stories spread, Hank feels almost obliged to engage with it, and he has been doing so with TikTok. | So Much to See 00:00:31 |
| 2020-07-21 | update | Having a TikTok-famous brother feels mostly good to John, but a little worrying. | Somebody Once Asked . . . 00:03:21 |
| 2020-08-28 | update | Hank says he has been spending a lot of time on TikTok because he is addicted to it. (playful) | Break the Mold 00:00:00 |
| 2021-03-09 | update | In 2010 Hank was a goofball corndog enthusiast; today he is a TikTok sensation among the world's leading science communicators, two phrases John had never heard in 2010. | Hank Rebranded Without Any of Us Noticing 00:00:58 |
| 2021-03-12 | update | Ordering a pizza right before recording, Hank gave his name and was told 'I love your TikToks'; he asked to record the person. | A Crisis of Branding 00:00:29 |
| 2021-09-03 | update | Hank makes about 20 science and 60 non-science TikToks a month, why being a bit of a mystery to him. (playful) | What the Heck am I doing? 00:00:47 |
| 2021-10-05 (happened 2020-05) | retold | Hank says that in May 2020 someone told him TikTok is pretty cool; very soon he was uploading several TikToks a day, and over a year later he still is. | Why the Heck am I on TikTok??? 00:00:00 |
| 2022-12-23 | mentioned | Hank says he is very good at becoming whatever a platform wants him to be: he got good at YouTube, Twitter and TikTok, and just had the top toot of the day on Mastodon. | You Cannot Trust Yourself (Hank's End of the Year Worries) 00:01:38 |
| 2023-01-17 | update | John adds that Hank is a podcaster and huge on TikTok. | John Green Answers the Most Searched Hank Green Questions 00:00:29 |
| 2023-04-07 | retold | Hank says a few years ago he decided to try to get big on TikTok because he missed being part of a new platform's rise, as with YouTube. (hedged) | Getting One Million LinkedIn Followers 00:00:00 |
| 2023-04-07 | update | Hank says he now has 7 million TikTok followers, more than anywhere else. | Getting One Million LinkedIn Followers 00:00:00 |
| 2023-04-21 | update | As perhaps the person in Montana with the most TikTok followers, Hank says reporters, local reporters and TikTok's comms people have been calling him for comment. | On TikTok Bans 00:00:21 |
| 2023-10-06 | mentioned | Hank says he has never been a full-time CEO: in that time he also wrote two novels, made countless TikToks and spent far too much time on Twitter. (playful) | I Quit 00:01:01 |
| 2024-05-24 | update | In a channel comment Hank says people who approach him in public mostly know him from Crash Course, with TikTok second. | An Ancient Apocalypse creator comment |
| 2024-08-07 | mentioned | Hank says his TikTok star shone brightly, then he got cancer and Vlogbrothers had its biggest subscriber day in ten years. (playful) | Dear Hank and John Livestream! 00:08:09 |
| 2024-08-27 (happened 2018) | retold | John says Hank bet on TikTok in 2018 and benefited financially when it blew up. | How The Internet Is Rigged 00:03:14 |
| 2024-09-20 (happened 2020-09) | retold | Hank says almost exactly four years ago he uploaded his first TikTok; his fourth got millions of views, and with a book coming and his fascination with platforms he pushed hard into TikTok. | Do I Regret TikTok? 00:00:00 |
| 2024-09-20 | update | As TikTok stopped being fun, buzzy and cool, it changed for Hank from a place of doing things with people and making culture to one where things just happened to him; he enjoys it less. | Do I Regret TikTok? 00:07:45 |
| 2026-02-15 | update | Hank realised he was putting about 60% of a YouTube video's effort into a TikTok, while a YouTube video is far better for the world; he now makes far fewer TikToks, having once made three a day. | Project for Awesome 2026 part 5! 03:41:03 |
What is said about it
9 statements, by date (the events above are the turns of the thread; these are the details).
- 2020-07-17 · So Much to See — recommendation: Hank tells viewers not to download TikTok just to follow him: it is addictive and gathers a huge amount of data, which could be misused or compromised in the future. — 00:00:31
- 2020-07-17 · So Much to See — Hank: The platforms through which we consume content heavily affect what kind of content gets created. — 00:01:11
- 2020-07-17 · So Much to See — Hank cites Marshall McLuhan's 'the medium is the message': how content is distributed and discovered shapes it so profoundly that the medium is kind of the content. — 00:01:11
- 2020-07-17 · So Much to See — Hank: American television needed 22-minute pieces of content to fit eight minutes of ads every half hour, and the sitcom defined itself around that constraint. — 00:01:11
- 2020-07-17 · So Much to See — Hank: Today the medium is no longer television or radio but the platform, the algorithm, which deeply controls what content gets made and for whom. — 00:01:11
- 2020-08-28 · Break the Mold — Hank says it is also true that following trends is part of his work: it feeds some of the best parts of his novels, and Complexly, SciShow and Crash Course need to understand how people get information. — 00:00:14
- 2020-08-28 · Break the Mold — Hank says Facebook is also a big media player, yet he spends about 15 minutes a month there; his posts there are just reposted tweets. — 00:00:29
- 2020-08-28 · Break the Mold — Hank grants TikTok has problems but questions whether it is more of a security concern than Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. — 00:00:46
- 2021-03-09 · Hank Rebranded Without Any of Us Noticing — John: The other approach is slow reimagining over time, which often goes unnoticed until we look back into the past. — 00:01:27