Host of TikTok’s Official Podcast 'For You'

Brittany Broski | Biography

Rose to Social Media Stardom as the “Kombucha girl” On TikTok in 2019

• By Ashna Tamrakar
• Update : September 03, 2021

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Brittany Broski is an Internet personality who rose to social media stardom as the “Kombucha girl” after appearing in a famous TikTok video in 2019.

Who Is Brittany Broski?

Brittany Alexis Tomlinson, best known by her online name Brittany Broski, is an American social media personality and comedian. She became a popular meme and rose to prominence after a video of her eating kombucha went viral on TikTok in August 2019. Since then, she has uploaded hundreds of videos garnering over 260 million likes and 6.3 million followers on the platform as of 12 August 2021.

Her kombucha video also has garnered over 15 million views and 2.2 million likes on TikTok. Since then, Brittany has posted several viral videos on TikTok, which has over 6.3 million followers and over 260 million likes. 

Another of her viral video is about a supper menu containing hot dogs and noodles. The video has nearly as many likes as the kombucha video. 

Broski is also the host of TikTok’s official podcast called For You.

Early Age & Education 

Brittany Broski's birthday is on 10 May. She was born in 1997 in Dallas, Texas, United States. She earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Communications from Texas A&M University magna cum laude in 2018. She was also a member of her school’s improv troupes throughout high school and college. She is known for making jokes while performing in plays and musicals such as The Addams Family, Bus Stop, and Spamalot!

Early Career 

Upon graduating, Broski went on to work at a call center but quit because it depressed her. After that, she worked for a bank in trust and investment services. Unfortunately, she was dismissed from the position in September 2019 after her boss found the kombucha video and assumed that Broski’s viral popularity would jeopardize the bank’s reputation. “[The work environment] is very conservative, very professional — I mean, it’s a southern bank in North Texas,” she later said in an interview with Time.

Rise To Fame on TikTok

Broski used to record silly videos on Snapchat since the beginning of high school. At the suggestion of her friends, she started a TikTok account in June 2019 under the username (brittanyt445). Thereafter, she began uploading her old Snapchat videos there. Her debut Tik Tok video about her “depression meal,” which went viral rapidly, was originally one from her Snapchat collection. She uploaded the video around 9 p.m. on 17 July 2019, and to her surprise, it made an impact on Reddit the next morning. In just 12 hours, the video had 20,000 likes and 500,000 views.

In August 2019, she shared her most popular video, in which she tries cherry cola-flavored kombucha for the very first time while making fast altering facial expressions. That video too was actually shot on Snapchat and was originally a two-minute clip of her talking about, testing, and reacting to Kombucha. The trimmed 21 seconds Tik Tok clip soon went viral, becoming one of the year’s top 10 most popular videos on TikTok. Because of its popularity, she was even dubbed “Kombucha girl.”

Her Kombucha video primarily went viral through Twitter. It initially had 15,000 likes on TikTok, which was quite typical for her channel then. But on its Twitter repost by the handle, (popstardave) it had surpassed a million views. People retweeted (popstardaveh)'s tweet with a different caption, and it started appearing everywhere.

On Being a Meme

Her Internet fame mostly owed to the development of relevant memes from her Kombucha video as well as the reposting of her video with hilarious captions. Her hilarious reaction to trying Kombucha was everywhere at that point in time, whether it be the full clip or just the two pictures of her alternating reaction while trying Kombucha. 

“I mean there was a period of time, about two weeks, where that is all I saw on my timeline! On anyone's timeline! It sorta took over the internet," she told The Teen Mag in 2020.

Furthermore, in the same interview, she expressed her feelings on becoming a viral meme." It was definitely weird, but after a certain point you sorta get used to it. At that point, two or three weeks into the meme being viral, I was picking out my favorite ones," she shared.

However, she also experienced a substantial share of mental pressure on the aspect. 

"The things people say to me and other creators online, you would never fathom someone coming up to you on the street and saying those things to you," she begins. "I get messages about my appearance, my weight, my voice, my face, you forget that people conceive you in that way," she told The Teen Mag in 2020.

On Gaining Popularity

She couldn't believe how popular she had become at first. Her acquaintances were all messaging her. Then it came to the point where she was sick of seeing her footage all over the place. It began to appear less amusing to her, despite the fact that others found it amusing. However, becoming viral brings with it an inevitable encounter with offensive humor/responses and she had to deal with those as well.

"You gotta have thick skin, which luckily I do," Broski said in a 2019 interview with the Dallas Observer on what it's like to become viral. "Because I've been told I look like Buzz Lightyear, Owen Wilson, people are so brutally honest. You have to have a good sense of humor about it", she added.

In the same interview, she also stated that there always remains pressure to improve and maintain the Internet star reputation. She explained that different social media sites had a distinct nature of humor/response when it came to content reputation. Swinging within the diversity of comedy leanings as well as audiences across the media sites, Twitter and Tik Tok in her case, she started posting content on her YouTube channel on 21 Aug 2019.

She also stated that her popularity has affected her sense of self, according to her interview with The Teen Mag in 2020.

"I'm like, is this it? Am I just going to make Youtube videos until I die? It can be very difficult, being a person of interest and being an audience member on social media are two very different things," she said.

In addition, she noted in the same interview, that becoming viral follows a slew of privacy issues. She explained in reference to her case stating that the video no longer belongs to the owner instead, to the Internet. She also urged everyone to think before posting through the same interview.

Fired

Prior to her popularity, Broski worked in trust and investment services at a bank. However, she was fired after her video received a lot of attention on Twitter and people started annotating it with some obscene "non-Christian" remarks. She even tried to explain to her boss that she had no involvement in or control over the explicit captions, but she was nonetheless dismissed.

"I definitely understand it from the company’s perspective, it’s a twenty-something goofing around on the internet and then coming into work the next morning being like: 'Yeah, I will handle your millions of dollars worth of assets!' I can understand how that's a problem," Broski told The Teen Mag in 2020. 

For her and her family, working in the bank was a "big girl" thing to do. In addition, that was a job she was really proud of. She felt humiliated and even cried when she lost her job. But, on the other side, she was building a fanbase and becoming more visible in brand partnerships. Although she had already prepared herself to work as a waitress, she was offered her first brand contract barely a week after she was fired from her job.

Family

Her parents are proud of her social media accomplishments. Her father even encouraged her to go to California after she was fired from her banking job since he believed it would be a better fit for her new venture as an Internet star. Her grandparents, on the other hand, mistook her for a homeless person after finding out she was fired from her job and requested her to live with them instead of moving to California.

Collaboration with GT’s Living Foods and Others

Soon after the video went viral, Broski traveled to California to speak with a kombucha company called GT’s Living Foods. She would then partner with the company on several occasions. “Literally nine days later I was in L.A., and it’s been nonstop since then,” she said, told Time. 

Similarly, Brittany has also collaborated with renowned brands like Crocs, Chipotle, KIND, and HelloFresh.

Appearances 

Broski appeared in the third episode of the culinary competition Dish This on 25 August 2020, titled 'TikTok CHAOS pumpkin spice latte cupcake fail', which was presented and judged by Chowhound editor-at-large Joey Skladany and premiered on Awesomeness TV's YouTube channel on 4 August 2020. It was a six-episode show that included Tik Tok artists like Noah Beck, Griffin Johnson, Sarah Schauer, Cristian Dennis, Tyshon Lawrence, Daniella, and Devenity Perkins, Sofie Dossi, and Zak Dossi alongside Brittany Broski.

Broski further appeared as a host of the TikTok New Year’s Eve Party 2021 along with Lil Yachty where they facilitated a live event featuring musical acts, trend commentaries, and segments for humanitarian causes. Additionally, she was featured in an editorial of the New York Times in August of 2019. She was also featured in a Super Bowl commercial for Sabra hummus in February 2020.

Podcast 

Broski hosts the For You Podcast, a weekly Tik Tok live interview program that brings popular and innovative TikTok producers on the program and digs further into their lives. This podcast titillates the attention of individuals who want to know the TikTok world and artists better and covers subjects such as the featured Tik Tok star’s journey as a TikTokker and their favorite filming locations. Its first episode aired on 28 January 2021 and featured the TikTok star Frankie Jonas.

Awards and Nomination

She was the winner of the ‘Break the Internet Awards’ in the category ‘Tiktok of the Year’ in 2019. She also brought home the Outstanding Tiktokker award in World of Wonder’s 2020. Furthermore, she was nominated for TikTokker of the Year at the 12th annual Shorty Awards in 2020.

Backlash

Broski had made a TikTok video outlining it was okay for non-Black individuals to speak African American vernacular English (AAVE). She stated in the video that AAVE was an integral component of internet culture and that it was how "everyone" communicated in online groups. 

“I feel like it’s a very fine line between genuinely calling out a creator that’s using AAVE or the blaccent for comedic purposes versus quoting something,” she spoke in the original TikTok clip. 

She further added, "The Nicki Minaj thing, 'The big boobs? Chile, anyway,' that's a meme, obviously. So when someone quoting that or when someone says 'period,' 'sis,' 'snatch,' all that, it's very much like internet culture. Like stan Twitter. Stan culture has its own language."

But, she later apologized and deleted the videos because of the massive backlash.

“Y’all really let this yt woman sit up and here and boldly tell black people AAVE is 'stan culture” I’m sick,' a black women wrote on Twitter on 31 July 2020.