“Do you want to be in a video today?” shouts a man wearing thick black sunglasses as he hares after a young girl in a cream crop top. “It’s for TikTok!”
As she darts through the pastel gates of Brandy Melville, her pursuer turns lazily and saunters back towards Carnaby Street. It’s a sweltering July afternoon, and the street is buzzing with content creators. Two teenagers in grey tracksuits leap into the Swatch shop, eyes wide and phones up, while further up the street a drama teacher fresh off a long day at school unpacks his tripod and starts grilling the public about female F1 drivers.
Carnaby Street has always played host to young creatives on the come up. But over the past few years, a new scene has arisen here, one every bit as energetic and distinct as the swinging sixties’ pop stars. Hundreds of eager young TikTokkers have come here to make their fortunes. Some travel for hours each day just to film, transforming the promenade into a kind of incubator for a new generation of social media stars. “We call it Hollywood,” says Isabelle Clare, a Baywatch-blonde 25 year old who recently left her job as a fashion buyer for a career filming Sabrina Carpenter-themed street interviews.
Watching teams of content creators rove around beneath Carnaby Street’s iconic arced sign, it seemed as if some kind of mysterious algorithmic force had summoned them here. As I pulled out my phone to flick through their social media feeds, I wondered where they’d all come from, and why Carnaby Street of all places. But the more I scrolled, the more I started to wonder whether any of their viral videos were real at all.
‘It’s pure rage bait, really’
Three dapperly dressed Sudanese guys, Alba, Leo and Moyes, are buzzing around a tripod outside the Size? shoe store when I meet them. Moyes and Leo are brothers, both of whom arrived in the UK in 2018. As Moyes — plain black T-shirt, somewhere around his early 30s, clutching a box of cheap electronics — ushers an eager young woman into a street interview, Leo and Alba glide seamlessly behind the camera. “He’s the famous one,” Leo tells me, as Moyes fixes a quizzical look towards the camera and the woman starts to guess the value of the box.
You could be forgiven for thinking that such dull questions would limit their appeal. But Leo and Moyes are some of the most popular creators on the street, racking up millions of followers between them. Their most popular videos reach hundreds of millions of eyeballs. Leo was studying for a coding degree up until last year, but decided he could make more money producing reels. “I think this is unlimited income,” he declares boldly, despite admitting that he’s not yet earning enough to produce content full time. “One video can change your life.”
Yet of all the places to build a content empire, they chose Carnaby Street. When I ask them why here, of all places, they make out like it’s simply the right environment. “If you went somewhere else, you’d have to go and grab people,” reasons Alba, “whereas here people come to you.” It’s true that Carnaby Street holds certain advantages for the up and coming street interviewer: it’s pedestrianised, and has a constant supply of ambling teenagers and tourists who seem more than happy to get in front of the camera.
But there are plenty of pedestrianised streets around London, and none of those have anything like the amount of content creators found on Carnaby Street. As we’re chatting I can see at least ten more people filming along the street, thrusting mics at office workers as they stream around them like schools of fish. It’s not unusual to spot the odd person with a tripod on Brick Lane, or prowling the concrete of Coal Drops Yard. But often those tend to be lone rangers. Here they come in packs.
A little further down the street, Toby and Ramone are going about their craft, two more TikTokkers who’ve answered to the siren of Carnaby Street. The duo’s calling card is street interviews where they only ever provide the wrong answer, on anything from the provenance of shepherd's pie — a classic of the genre — or whether interviewees can guess the difference between identical images of a genie.
Regardless of the answer, what happens next is always the same: the interviewee will get more and more wound up, Ramone will grin knowingly to the camera and tell them they’re wrong, and voila, you’ve got yourself one viral video. “It’s pure rage bait, really,” he admits, not that he sees that as anything to be ashamed of.
At first, they also suggest Carnaby Street’s Goldilocks-like qualities are responsible for its influx of creators. In Camden and Hackney “you start to get certain niches of people, whereas central London and Soho’s just everyone,” offers Ramone, who wears a cheap laminated placard across his belly that reads: “Make me Laugh take Mystery Gift”. Eighteen years old, with a thin eyebrow slit and a short afro, he lives with his parents back in Bedfordshire. He and Toby make the four hour round trip to Soho several times a week.
But as we’re talking, Toby — heavily sunburned, thin bumfluff moustache, a touch shyer than his friend — lets on that with all these content creators on the same street, there can be certain other advantages. They’re all friends, he says. He mentions a group chat. “We’ll get in each other's videos,” he offers, as he and Ramone share a glance. “I’m leaking too much!” Toby says nervously, laughing as he backs away out onto the street. Then they start to explain.
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