Most of us are holed up at home for the foreseeable future, but for these five young Hoosiers of TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram fame, even a pandemic is no time to stop cranking out comedy and choreography gold.
Here are some lively ladies to follow if you’re craving crazy-clown lip syncs, cute-couple cuddles, or just some snarky levity amid all the sickness.
AVANI GREGG, 17
Handle: @avani on TikTok
Followers: 14.1 million
Hometown: Brownsburg
Claim to Fame: The rainbow eyeshadow-sporting makeup maven took over TikTok in 2019 with a #ClownCheck video that racked up more than 80 million views and gained her around three million followers in just a couple of weeks. She mugs, laughs, and lip syncs for the camera like a DJ getting high on a haunted house, her hair tied up in Harley Quinn pigtails with blue and pink scrunchies, eyes outlined in dripping twin red and blue stars, lips doused in dark red lipstick, tongue dyed Bottle Pop-blue, and irises obscured by solid-white contacts. She joined the Los Angeles influencer group The Hype House in 2019 alongside TikTok royalty Addison Rae, Charli D’Amelio, and Chase Hudson, and will play the role of Gemma in the upcoming sixth season of the Brat TV series Chicken Girls. And neither is her makeup mastery limited to clown creations: She dreams up looks from a spotted cheetah to an unhinged Bubbles the Powerpuff Girl, then lip syncs to tracks like “Off the Wall” by XXXTentacion featuring Ski Mask the Slump God and “In the Party” by Flo Milli.
Follow If You Like: Crazy-clown lip syncs, full-face makeup looks
Jazlyn G, 15
Handle: @itsjazlyng on TikTok
Followers: 955,000
Hometown: Fort Wayne
Claim to Fame: The Orlando-based lip sync artist often uses the Sunshine State’s palm trees — or Cinderella Castle at Disney World — for her English and Spanish bopalongs to the hits of artists like Cardi B and Romeo Santos. In addition to a TikTok collection of 15-second eye-roll, fist-pump, and tress-toss sequences, the Fort Wayne-born dance dynamo has a flair for fashion. Crop-top-and-holey-jean combos and neon bandage dresses are her go-to looks on Instagram, where she boasts another 155,000 followers. Disney references occasionally show up in the shimmy-and-shake queen’s song selection — she recently dreamed up a quarantine lip sync set to the Frozen 2 anthem “Into the Unknown.”
Follow If You Like: Spanish lip sync videos, warm-weather styles, Disney drop-ins
@itsjazlyng @dylan.diazz @yerennyy @ffcdoug ##foryoupage ##foryou♬ Eres Mía – Romeo Santos
Josie Sanders, 21
Handle: @josie_sanders on Instagram
Followers: 132,000
Hometown: Noblesville
Claim to Fame: Sanders took a leap when she left IUPUI one semester into a graphic-design degree in 2018 to make Instagram influencing her full-time gig. She specializes in capturing the Circle City from unexpected angles, from artsy gas-station snaps to laundromat- and grocery-store-aisle shoots. And she does it while rocking an enviable collection of beanies, turtlenecks, and, in balmier temperatures, wrap dresses and rompers. She also just launched a podcast, “Behind the Feed,” which offers a backstage look at the business side of social-media influencing, from planning shoots to partnering with brands. And look for all the cake-and-corsage content come June, when the bride-to-be is set to tie the knot with her high-school sweetheart.
Follow If You Like: A behind-the-scenes look at social-media influencing, “Wait, is that really Indianapolis?!” photos, musings of a bride-to-be.
Andrea Russett, 24
Handle: Andrea Russett on YouTube
Subscribers: 3 million
Hometown: Fort Wayne
Claim to Fame: The former radio host’s makeup tutorials and trying-out-a-trend videos come with a twist: She often films them while drunk or high. Videos like “Opening Stuff I Ordered While High” (3.1 million views), “Doing my Makeup While High” (770,000 views), and “Drunk Twister” (728,000 views) fill her eclectic channel, which also features Russett engaged in exploits like sampling hot and sour candy, covering her entire face with glitter (“very bad idea”), and conquering the cinnamon challenge. She hit it big in 2009 when, as a teen, she filmed a music video for a meet-Justin-Bieber contest (she didn’t win, but her compilation of her acting out every lyric from “One Time,” which took her three weeks to make, went viral). She’s grown up a bit since then—four-letter words, belches, and slapstick are now the candid creator’s currency, and she even appeared alongside Zac Efron in the raunchy 2016 comedy Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates.
Follow if you Like: Experimental makeup tutorials, candid slice-of-life stories, slapstick humor
Zoe Laverne, 18
Handle: @zoelaverne on TikTok
Followers: 13.3 million
Hometown: Greenwood
Claim to Fame: The blonde, doe-eyed fashionista began gaining ground on the lip-sync video platform Musical.ly in 2016 with her makeup tutorials and pop-song bopalongs, then shot into the social-media stratosphere with the app’s transformation into TikTok in 2018. Laverne’s 2.4 million Instagram followers know she has a flair for all things fashion, and she runs the popular YouTube channel Cody & Zoe with boyfriend Cody Orlove (their biggest hit, with more than 5.3 million views to date, is their 2018 video “Cheating on my Boyfriend Prank,” in which Zoe allows Cody to overhear her pretending to plan a date with another guy—the camera captures his devastation). She’s as comfortable in a sweatshirt and sweatpants as a crown and princess dress, and keeps her TikTok fans fueled with a steady supply of her dancing to hits like Malia Civetz’s new single “Broke Boy.”
Follow if you Like: Cute couple stories, bubbly dance moves, pop-music lip sync videos
Sarah Bahr is not Internet famous but did once rack up more than 2,000 YouTube views on a cooking video she filmed for her high-school Spanish class.
