#Charli D’Amelio reaches 100M TikTok followers despite backlash

Tick tock — time and the bar for highest social media platform follower counts are forever creeping forward.

Charli D’Amelio, social media’s biggest star and one of TikTok’s highest earners, this week became the first person to attain more than 100 million followers on the platform.

The record comes days after the 16-year-old influencer was bombarded with criticism for a controversial video she posted that many viewers found flippant and entitled and led to her losing a chunk of her following — a number she has now gained back, and then some.

In the initially follower-losing video, Charli has a cringeworthy disagreement with her parents, Marc and Heidi, while eating a dinner cooked by her personal chef Aaron May with fellow influencers James Charles and her sister, Dixie. Charli laments, at one point in the clip, that she hasn’t yet hit 100 million followers — a complaint which made her fans feel unappreciated. The video also features Dixie gagging in response to the escargot May cooked for the family.

“It’s disgusting how spoiled and disrespectful those girls are,” one commenter wrote.

In response, Charli didn’t apologize but doubled down on defending her behavior in the video, writing on Twitter Thursday that she’d “be back posting normal content with a smile on my face! At the end of the day I know I am a good person with a good heart and I will never change that about myself. I love you all!!”

Before passing the 100 million mark, however, Charli’s follower count dipped from 99.5 million before the video to 98.5 million after. James Charles, a beauty YouTube sensation, defended Charli amid the backlash.

“This Charli situation is NOT sitting right with me,” he vented on Twitter. “100M followers in one year & y’all expect her to know how to be a perfect role model? Death threats because she’s a picky eater & made a joke about a milestone? 30+ year olds dragging someone half their age? Feels familiar.”