From Office Job to TikTok Fame: Tom Lawrinson Shares His Story

TikTok star @tomlawrinson, from Stockport, has amassed over 200,000 followers since launching his channel in 2020, during the pandemic. He has shared his story with UPLOAD…

Becoming ‘TikTok famous’ is weird. Not much changes in your actual life – it’s like going on Big Brother. A few people might recognise me in the street but I still work my day job twice a week. I’m still a normal person.

With my TikTok career taking off, my stand-up is following suit and I’ve been lucky enough to reduce my hours at the office to do what I truly enjoy: Comedy.

I’ve been doing the stand-up comedy scene for six years now and it’s great to see it really taking off. Once you’ve been doing it for that long, you really start to figure out what your voice is as a comedian.

My stand-up comedy is slightly different to the type of content I upload to TikTok. It’s similar, it’s still me, but my stand-up is just ‘weirder’ and cheeky in some ways, and I prefer to use shorter jokes rather than the skit-type style I follow online.

What I love most about my content online is that every viral video I’ve ever had is a comedy skit based on something that happened in my life previously.

I believe these videos generally trigger some visceral ‘thing’ within people where they relate so strongly to my experiences, they can’t help but interact with it.

My most viral video was based on a camping trip I went on as a kid when I was about 12, and my friend’s dad was horrible to me the whole time.

Previously, I would dwell on the experience I had on that ‘fun’ trip, but since posting the re-enactment of it on to TikTok and having people relate and find it funny, I feel free of it. All of that bottled up embarrassment and awkwardness I had was finally off my chest. It was like therapy, for free.

I truly never imagined it doing well. I actually showed it to my sister before I posted it and she told me not to publish it and even said: “That’s mean, people don’t want to see that.”

But I guess she was wrong, that video has helped push my account the most out of them all.

Obviously, when you start to generate a large following, the spam artists come and throw all kinds of hate comments under your videos. People like to have a pop at my eyebrows sometimes, that’s as far as any hate usually goes for me.

I’ve found the best thing to do is to delete and block them immediately. It takes a bit of energy but it works.

My biggest aim in my career is to have a large enough audience to go on a tour of my own – I want to sell tickets to the moon, baby.

Making content for TikTok isn’t always easy, but when people leave nice comments or approach me in person to give me positive feedback on my comedy, then it makes everything seem really worthwhile.