In 2019, everyone likes to take their pills of entertainment in really tiny doses and the one that works instantly. An entire story may be unraveled in a fleeting video snippet, a tweet, or maybe even a GIF. The social media app TikTok — a video-sharing platform started in 2017 by the Chinese company ByteDance — has built a virtual world that at times spills on to the real world, on that premise.
Leveraging TikTok to the max, this Telugu duo has shot to international fame. Bhargav Chippada (22) and Nithyashree (13), have over a million views on their TikTok videos, which are also now being featured on YouTube. What's really cool is that over half a million of their followers on social media are not even from the country, let alone the south Indian states.
The duo are going places as the 'Oh My God, Oh My God' fever has spread across all social media platforms recently. Let me explain that to you if you already haven't their videos. Nithyashree or the 'Oh My God' girl as she's popularly known on the internet recently shared a video of the duo eating at their house — where Nithya refuses to eat potato fries made by her mother. However, when her brother (Bhargav) puts the same thing into a McDonald's packet that he finds after searching the dustbin, she immediately goes, "Oh my God! Oh my God!" and says that it's her favourite French fries.
This video has over 50,000 views on YouTube alone and more than 80,000 views on their TikTok channel called 'Funbucket Bhargav'. Bhargav used to be with the YouTube channel Funbucket, but has left since. The name, however, stuck. This video has even inspired several foreigners to make a spoof and share it on TikTok.
Bitten by the TikTok bug
TikTok has become the fastest growing social media app currently amassing a vast global collection of a maximum of 15-second clips that are changing the way we dress up, dance, sing, pose, joke, collaborate with others and also cook. TikTok video clips range from comedy sketches of real-life situations, dance challenges to makeshift runway shows and a lot more. For the good part, this platform has given popularity to numerous ordinary faces and now also the likes of Jimmy Fallon and Reese Witherspoon are getting on in the trend.
Even after all the international attention on TikTok, these two youngsters are still trying to figure out how they managed to create this kind of a crazy fan base. Bhargav, who discontinued his studies after completing Class X, started making videos on TikTok a year ago — it was called Dubsmash then — and people had to lipsync famous dialogues or songs. "Everyone was doing Dubsmash at that time. I was curious as to what people were making a big deal about, so I installed the app. It made no sense to me to just mouth dialogues on Dubsmash. I always aspired to be an actor in the Telugu film industry and what filmmakers wanted was a portfolio with original content. That's when I realised that if anyone asked me to send a video, all I had were Dubsmash videos. So, then I decided to use my own voice and create original content on the app, which had then transformed in Musical.ly," says Bhargav.
That's when Bhargav began his journey. In 2018, TikTok organised a challenge including all content creators all over India to showcase their original content online, in which Bhargav won for Telugu language content in his state. On April 1, his video on April fool jokes, which became a turning point for his TikTok journey, garnered 2.4 millions likes over a span of two days. Bhargav met Nithya a few months ago through a common friend. However, the 13-year-old was already popular, as she had made her debut in the flick Care of Kancherapalam. Nithya's mother is also seen in some of their videos like in the French fries one.
Nithya says that she has been flooded with film offers after her new found stardom on TikTok and she gives full credit to Bhargav for the one-liners in their videos. Bhargav too says that he is enjoying the stardom and fan-following but wants to do more with it. "I want to become an actor and want to learn English so I can reach more audiences after overcoming the language barrier," he concludes.
