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In March 2022, Jake Novak started taking his TikTok output seriously.
That is, until June 15, when the attention turned sour.
On that day, emboldened by his growing fan base, Novakposted a videothat immediately entered TikTok infamy.
It … didnotgo well.
In an instant, Novak became the King of TikTok Cringe.
Even formerSNLcast memberLeslie Jones commentedwith a facepalm emoji.
Novaks silence led to even more intrigue: Where was the man who had taken TikTok by hatestorm?
Multiple peopleposted videos of himat work at Disneyland.
Some TikTokerswrote songs ironically begging him to return, and others madeparodies that veered dangerously close to the original.
He made some people laugh andsome people angry.
He becamethe subject of YouTube video essaysdiscussing cringe.
So how does it feel to be the target of such an enormous internet pile-on calling you cringe?
Whats it like to avoid the internet when you know the internet is still obsessed with you?
Would you say earnestness is a large part of what you were trying to do?I think so.
I dont know if that was an intent of mine from the start.
I was walking a line between arch and earnest, but trying to steer more toward the latter.
Im a musical-theater kid, through and through.
Ive been doing musicals since I was 9 years old.
I discoveredIn the Heightswhen I was younger, and it just blew my mind.
And as a theater guy, Stephen Sondheim is basically … hes basically God.
I found my love of storytelling through Sondheim.
Bo Burnham is like …
I mean, we all love Bo.
How do you not?
Would you consider yourself a super-online person?No.
I find that when I am spending more time online, Im less happy.
Im less engaged in the real world.
Thats just come to be a version of myself that I dont like as much as others.
Okay, were gonna go into theSNLvideo now.All right, lets go.
At that point, it wasnt like I was a complete nobody.
Did you show it to anyone before you posted?This one I did not.
Creating a music video and song is not a trivial amount of work.
And I wish that I had.
But at that point, that was not an option for me.
I was very hell-bent on keeping that schedule.
And those timelines were all self-imposed based on how much work you wanted to get done?Thats right.
I had to follow through on it.
I mean, one of the first lines is, Hi, Lorne Michaels.
That was the target audience.
Were you happy with the video when you posted it?I was.
I thought it was fun.
I thought that I did good work on it.
I dont … Thats interesting.
Yeah, I guess I havent really put a definition on what that means in internet speak.
Or something like that.
It definitely does start to make you wonder,Oh gosh, there are that many people saying this.
Is that true?So … [Gets choked up.]
I got a lot of really nasty emails.
Or people just telling me, Youre horrible, Youre cringey.
Definitely got at least one encouragement to kill myself.
So theres probably been more of those, although I havent seen them directly.
It just sort of evolved into just a hate inbox, so Ive taken that off my site.
Its prompted the start of investigations about who these people are that are sending these kinds of messages.
My initial thought was that I was just going to take it in stride.
I had something written and recorded that I was pretty ready to move forward with.
It had nothing to do with any of this.
I think it was just like,Hold on.
Dont worry about that week-to-week deadline right now, because this is a special circumstance.
Why didnt you delete it?I dont know.
It just didnt really cross my mind.
So the thing is never really gone in that sense.
I have no interest in letting a bunch of strangers have say over that.
You work at Disneyland, correct?Yes.
Have you encountered anyone there who recognized you?Yes.
I havent had encounters that were very clearly negative.
Im aware that people have found me out in the world and are doing something with that.
How does that affect your work there?Its kind of back and forth.
There are some times where I just dont think about it, dont worry about it, its fine.
Whatisunusual is that Ive sort of come to a less trustful place.
And ultimately, I do not have control over that.
Do you want to create content moving forward?Oh, absolutely.
I have no intention of backing down from that whatsoever.
Im definitely having to reevaluate my relationship with them and what I want that to be going forward.
You took on the persona of Anxious Guy ina lot of your TikTok videos.
Now Im having to live my life with a bit more skittishness.
I really dont have an issue if people dont like the stuff that I do.
I made a thing that you thought sucked.
Dont come after me in my real life.
Just leave me alone.
Theres a reason why you’ve got the option to just scroll.
Are you giving something up by not embracing all the attention?Probably, yeah.
And to be clear, I dont know if Im done with the internet yet.
But in the meantime, well see how it goes.
Im getting to see my friends more and just have more meaningful experiences in real life.
I think that Im realizing in this little break how important those are.
I dont necessarily think thats true anymore.
I think that we all have to have a sort of balance.
That is an attitude that weve forgotten about in the internet era of now, now, now.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
