On February 18, two dance students at BYU-Idaho became Tik Tok viral with a video of them wearing a couple of AC units, or as they call them, tubes.
Senior Kaidyn Lundquist and junior Hayley Stoddard decided after a long day of rehearsals to blow off steam and have some fun. They put on two tube dance costumes, which covered their entire bodies, walked around, filmed it, put it on Tik Tok and called it a day.
To their surprise, the video they captioned as “That’s it. That’s the Tik Tok.” received over 3 million views. From there, it took off. Lundquist, who posted the video, went from 45 followers to 57 thousand, and Stoddard went from 10 followers to about 1000.
“At first we would get so excited at the attention it was getting that we would have to tell each other to turn our phones off to stop looking at it,” Lundquist said. “My phone started to freeze at how many notifications I was getting.”
After a flood of positive comments, they decided to make a mini-series. In their tubes, they did everything from sitting by the fire to Chef Boyardee commercial spoofs. The most popular video, filmed right in front of the BYU-Idaho Center, picked-up 8 million views.
Even celebrities commented on their posts.
“I’m not sure who some of the celebrities are, but we’ve had a lot of people comment who have the blue checkmark next to their name,” Lundquist said. “One of the people who has been commenting makes his Tik Tok’s with Jason Derulo.”
For Stoddard and Lundquist, it has been nothing but a positive experience.
“We haven’t received any negative comments through the whole thing, and it’s also a way for us to relax from classes,” Lundquist said. “It’s honestly just silly, wholesome fun. It’s even made Hayley and I better friends.”
Due to their separate locations for the next several months, the two decided to post a closing Tik Tok. With one tube driving away, and another frantically waving goodbye.
Their followers’ comments include, “this is heartbreaking” and “I will cry.” One follower even added, “I’m gonna need the Netflix series of this pls ASAP.”
Currently, they are brainstorming ways to continue their tube journey while in separate locations. Come fall, they plan to be in the same location once again and hope to continue it from there. They considered other options, but for now, Lundquist said, “We’ll just see what happens.”
