Dolores Paolino dances, tells salty jokes and dresses up like Marilyn Monroe for her 2.4 million TikTok followers. She’s 89.
Her only phone is a landline, which means she can’t record herself or post anything on TikTok. That is the job of her 20-year-old grandson Julian Giacobbo, who also writes scripts and edits videos into 30-second clips.
“He does it all,” says Ms Paolino, who lives in South Philadelphia and shot to fame three years ago when her grandson recorded her downing a spiked iced tea when she was supposed to be chaperoning his Halloween party.
Grandchildren who accidentally turned their grandparents into TikTok stars are finding themselves in an unexpected role: managing the careers of their much older relatives. While Granny gets recognised at diners and doctor’s visits, the youngsters are toiling behind the scenes making deals with advertisers, responding to fan comments and figuring out how to teach octogenarians the latest TikTok dances.
It can be rewarding. Companies pay for the senior stars to promote toys, laundry detergent and other products. Several grandparents and younger relatives interviewed say they split the money.
Mr. Giacobbo, who lives near his grandma, takes videos of her between college classes and an internship.
Ms. Paolino likes to stay feisty on TikTok, a reminder of her younger days when she danced at social clubs. She gyrated against an oxygen tank in one video to announce she was home from a hospital stay. In another, she danced with a patio umbrella as if it was a stripper pole.
It can take two hours to film one TikTok. “She forgets her lines,” Mr. Giacobbo says of his grandmother.
“I don’t forget!” Ms. Paolino shoots back, explaining that she starts and stops frequently to ensure she gets her lines right. “I think he just said that to aggravate me.”
Ms. Paolino’s life hasn’t changed entirely. She still sells Avon beauty products. But the extra cash from TikTok is nice. She says she uses it to spoil her five grandchildren with gestures, such as taking them out to lunch and paying for it all.
“I just enjoy spending it,” she says. “If I don’t spend it now, what am I going to do?”
Kevin Droniak moved to Los Angeles in 2020, far away from the Connecticut home of his grandmother Lillian Droniak. She is 92 and once worked in a factory assembling parts for an aircraft manufacturer. Now she’s a TikTok star, with help from her grandson.
Mr. Droniak, who is 25, decided to keep the videos coming without being with Ms. Droniak, who uses a flip phone and still mourns the decline of phone books.
He bought her an iPhone that she uses only over Wi-Fi, without cellular service. After she films herself, the video automatically goes to the cloud and Mr. Droniak downloads it from across the country to edit and post on TikTok.
He flies to Connecticut monthly to film ads, for which companies pay about five figures, Mr. Droniak says. What does his grandma do with the money? “I go to the store if I need a jacket or a new pair of shoes,” says Ms. Droniak, who also hands out $20 bills to family members who drive her around. “They appreciate it,” she adds.
Beyond the ads, she decides what she wants to film alone. She videos dancing on her porch or telling followers she wants to adopt them as her grandchildren. In a recent clip, she lists her goals for the new year. They include “stay alive.”
Ms. Droniak says TikTok keeps her busy and close to her grandson. She plans to do it as long as she can.
“Maybe that’s why I’m living so long,” she says, “because God says: She’s having fun and people love her.”
These older folks have racked up views on TikTok because they stand out on the app, mainly filled with teens.
“You’re seeing a lot of young faces,” says Mae Karwowski, founder of influencer marketing agency Obviously. “People really stop when they see a grandparent.”
After his celebrity grandma drew over 5 million TikTok followers, Thomas Cheung tried to give her a break because of her bad back. He posted videos of his daughter and himself instead. Views plummeted.
“They wanted granny,” says Mr Cheung, 35, who lives in Sydney, Australia.
His grandmother, Hui Jun Wang, didn’t want her TikTok career to end either. She says that shooting videos, in which she dances and raps, reminds her of her time singing opera as a child.
“It is quite a challenging puzzle to solve,” her grandson says. “How do you make a viral video with your 96-year-old grandma who can barely move?”
Mr Cheung came up with a way. He films her sitting down and brings her things to react to. In one video, he shows her pictures of rappers and asks which one she would date. She picks the only option without face tattoos, Indonesian rapper Rich Brian, and says, “yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,” when she sees him. The video has 1.6 million views.
