Paul Zimmer, now 24, was one of the biggest stars on Musical.ly – an app for sharing lipsyncing videos that was in 2018 bought by TikTok, the fastest-growing social media platform in the world. If you aren’t a native user of either of these apps, Zimmer’s viral stardom may be confusing: most of his videos feature him doing jerky dance moves to pop tracks and taking his top off in time to the music. By the start of 2017, these videos were regularly receiving 500,000 views and he had over seven million followers on Musical.ly.
I came across Zimmer in May 2018, a year after the collapse of his reign over Musical.ly. Zimmer had been swept up in a controversy that hit many social media stars on Musical.ly’s sister app, Live.ly – where users could livestream to their followers. During these livestreams, users could receive “gifts”: paid-for stickers, sent by fans to their favourite stars, which transferred the cash value of that sticker to the streamer. In exchange for receiving these gifts, popular creators would offer some sort of fan interaction, such as a shout-out, a private message, or even a cameo in one of their videos. It turned out that Zimmer was one of many big names who was receiving the cash, but not honouring the promises made to get it.
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