The Dark and Bright Sides of TikTok: Gaining 1,800+ Followers in a Week

In one week, Blades Gents Barbers, one of my beloved clients, surged past 1,800 followers and clocked up over 220,000 likes on TikTok - entirely organically. No paid ads. No boosted posts. Just pure content. But what made the difference? Dinosaurs.

We tapped into trends from the Jurassic Park franchise, adapting the chaos, humour, and absurdity of those iconic scenes into the everyday world of barbering. It was bizarre, fast, and against all conventional marketing logic - and that’s precisely why it worked.

TikTok Is Unlike Any Other Platform

Hard to believe what works on TikTok.

If you’ve come from a traditional marketing background, TikTok feels like a slap in the face. The platform rewards spontaneity over structure, humour over professionalism, and sometimes chaos over clarity. The things you’re taught in textbooks - consistent branding, professional tone, polished delivery - are almost entirely irrelevant here.

On TikTok, authenticity is the brand. Our Jurassic Park-inspired clips, creatively repurposed to fit the world of barbering, did numbers because they weren’t polished - they were relatable. That kind of viral growth simply wouldn’t happen on Facebook or Instagram without paid support.

But TikTok Has a Dark Side

While TikTok’s algorithm is undeniably powerful, it comes with a serious downside: unfiltered hate and racism. Blades Gents Barbers, a proudly Kurdish-owned barbershop, has experienced this abuse first-hand. Despite sharing creative, light-hearted content - often meme-driven and highly engaging - their page regularly receives racist comments such as “yous are immigrants” and “illegals”.

And these are only the comments without any spelling errors.

This kind of targeted harassment isn’t rare - it’s alarmingly common on TikTok and other minority creators. Yet TikTok’s moderation system remains inconsistent at best, and completely absent at worst. For a platform that prides itself on community and creativity, this lack of protection is not just disappointing - it’s dangerous.

As someone working in marketing, I’ve seen how effective TikTok can be in building a brand. But I’ve also seen how quickly that success is soured when racism goes unchecked. For younger audiences especially, the normalisation of hate - particularly around ethnicity and immigration - is incredibly damaging.

We’re Proud of What We’ve Done – But It’s Not All Likes and Laughs

Blades Gents Barbers - 120 Lisburn Road

We’re incredibly proud of the results we’ve achieved - because they’re proof that small, independent businesses can go viral without big budgets. We’ve shown that you can still have fun, be current, and stand out in a very saturated space. TikTok gave us a platform - and we used it in a smart (debatable) and creative way.

But we’re also aware of what’s wrong with it. If we don’t speak up about the toxicity and racism plaguing TikTok’s comments section, we’re part of the problem. And if TikTok wants to position itself as the future of digital marketing, it needs to start acting like it.

Final Thoughts

TikTok is a game-changer. It defies the rules of traditional marketing, rewards risk-taking, and can take your brand further in a week than other platforms can in a year. But it’s also a place of unchecked abuse and casual racism - especially toward hardworking Kurdish barbers trying to do their thing.

We’ve thrived on TikTok by staying original and riding the wave of trending content. But let’s not forget the real work ahead: making it a safer, fairer space for everyone.