Photo: instagram
He's a breath of fresh air.
By Samantha Maffucci — Written on Oct 14, 2019
Kids these days will never know the magic of Vine. The video-hosting service let users create six-second video clips, gifting us with some of the most hilarious and unique comedy. Vine also launched the careers of multiple social media personalities, including Arielle Vandenberg (who now hosts Love Island USA), Brittany Furlan (who is married to Tommy Lee), as well as Brandon Calvillo, Liza Koshy, and even Shawn Mendes.
Unfortunately, in 2016, Vine disabled uploads and the videos were all archived, forcing thousands of popular users to YouTube. Eventually, in 2017, TikTok was launched, allowing users to create comedy, “talent” videos, and lip-syncing videos. You’ve probably even seen many of those videos circulating on social media.
But the creation of TikTok has also welcomed some brand new talent onto the Internet.
Who is Noen Eubanks? Eubanks is a TikTok star and social media personality with over 5 million fans, as well as a YouTube channel and a Twitter account. And though his current relationship status is unknown, it's pretty impressive that he’s only 18 years old!
In a September 2019 interview with Paper Magazine, Eubanks discussed his comedic style, what it’s like being an influencer, and how TikTok impacted his life.
As the magazine put it, “His dedication to making his fans smile surely isn’t just for inside-jokes; he recounts dedicating himself to a regimen for postings, and with TikTok growing in cultural potency by the day and trend, Eubanks has made it past the pack. When speaking with him, it becomes clear that he’s wanting to leverage multi-platform approach to fame, gaining followers on Instagram and even considering branching out with the ‘Noen brand.’”
For Eubanks, discovering TikTok originally started out as a joke.
He said, “I first downloaded the app and I recorded a video just to send to my brother as a joke, and that was pretty much it, and I deleted the app. That was that for two months. It was really popular, I had a lot of traction, people were still talking about it so I re-downloaded the app. Part of the reason I started posting videos was that the first video I made got 100-something views and after that I lost my mind. That's when I started, like, ‘Oh, maybe I can do something with this,’ so I just kept on posting. That was what started it.”
He also recalled the moment he began gaining more followers, adding:
“It was something I was avoiding for a very long time because my content, up until that point, was like the stupid jokes that weren’t actually funny whatsoever, but I thought that I was going somewhere with it. So January 2nd — I had said that I was going to do it if I hit a certain milestone — was the first time that I posted an un-ironic video. It wasn’t me making a joke. It was just me being me for a minute. People really liked it. I didn’t leave the video up, I took it down after an hour, but for the time that it was up, they enjoyed it. And I was like, ‘Maybe that's the route I go down.’ Of course, I tried a little bit of that but also continued the stupid, not-funny jokes.
Then after a little while, I was doing so much of me just being me, and that’s what people wanted to see. I started to get more traction and more traction, and then that’s right about the time the whole e-boy thing began. Then I got thrown into that category and then that was just a thing for a while. There was a group of these e-boys, and by that time e-boys and f-boys were two different things. Now, that is a part of e-boy culture, and part of the reason why is because there were other people that came into it with a little bit more style. I don’t want to say that I had more style than anyone else, but it wasn’t like explicit sexual content.”
In another interview with the New York Times, Eubanks opened up about how he curates content and concepts for new videos. “A lot of things I just know that they’ll work or they won’t work before they even go out. You can just feel it, you can just tell. Like, you’ll watch it and you just know, is this something that people are going to want to watch or not?” he said.
In addition to his fame on TikTok, he’s also signed with Kyra TV, which, according to their website, is “a Gen-Z entertainment network. The way young people consume media has changed. Kyra TV was created to embrace that change. In an age of fake news, scare-media and negativity, our mission is to create a better, more positive, inclusive world.”
The company aims to “dominate” the “12-to-20-year-old media market.” And with Eubanks on board, it’s certainly not out of the question. In fact, the company has already generated millions in revenue.
But for Noen Eubanks, his move to Los Angeles, teaming up with this company, and putting out videos that make everyone laugh, has really shaped him. Last year, he hated his job and his brother left for the Marines. Eubanks was also dealing with anxiety, but TikTok helped him develop his true persona and “explore his personal style.”
He concluded, “For the most part in person, people still weren’t a fan of me, but my fans would reassure me that they do like what I’m doing and so I didn’t care what everyone else was saying and it felt nice. I was thriving. I was doing what I wanted to, and people were enjoying it. There’s no better feeling than that.”
Samantha Maffucci is an editor for YourTango who focuses on writing trending news and entertainment pieces. In her free time, you can find her obsessing about cats, wine, and all things Vanderpump Rules.