A woman shot to social media fame overnight and has now racked up over 280,000 followers.
Becki Jones, 29, started a TikTok account at her niece’s request in October 2020 and has since taken the online platform by storm.
The woman, from Ellesmere Port, said she previously thought TikTok was a “kid’s app” and didn't think "anyone would be interested in her life".
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Becki told the ECHO: “It was Bonfire night 2020 and my niece said ‘should we make hot chocolate and film it?’, I was up for it and said should we put it on her account but she told me to make one and put it on mine.
“I posted it and the next day I woke up the video had over 900,000 views - I just thought ‘wow’. The next few days after that went a bit crazy.
“From there I started posting more videos and I noticed they were doing well. Then I found out you could go live with a certain amount of followers so I’d do that and people would write to me. It was crazy because I’d always thought of TikTok as a kids app, I never thought people would be interested in my life.”
Becki, who studied child care are university, started posting more videos of her daily life, showcasing recipes and her now most popular series ‘WIEIAD’, What I Eat in a Day.
She said she started to receive more and more messages from strangers thanking her for her authenticity and for being a ‘body positive’ representative, however while her ‘loyal’ and ‘kind’ audience was growing, so were the trolls.
When she hit around 100,000 thousand followers Becki said she began receiving 'horrible' messages from strangers attacking her.
Becki, known as beckijones4 on TikTok, said: “When my account started to grow more that’s when I started getting hate. People would comment on how I look and what I'm eating and weight comments would start to happen more.
“It knocked my confidence a little bit. Knowing grown adults are sitting there talking about me, everything I do, what I wear, the way I speak - it was horrible.
“I remember thinking ‘should I do that? Should I not eat all day’ because of what someone commented on my video. It crossed my mind to get diet pills and go the gym - stuff like that.
“But I’m just me. Why should I basically starve myself to fit into a perfect body? They’ll just have to put up with it."
Becki said after comparing the pros and cons of the platform she believed the “amazing” and “positive feedback” from her followers and the overall growth of her confidence "by far outweighs the bad".
She said: “It’s crazy. I can’t believe the support you get.
“It's funny, me and my mum went shopping to Asda and one of the women working on till stopped us and said 'I knew you lived here but I've never seen you'. People we've seen so many times in our lives now know me from TikTok.
"I'll walk to my local shop which I've been going to for years and now the kids outside will stop and ask me for photos.
“Last year I went to a festival and there was a queue of people to see me - I couldn't believe it. I’m just Becki, I'm just a girl from Ellesmere Port, you don't expect this to happen to you."
Becki said her niece admits she sometimes wishes they’d posted the hot chocolate video on her account now, but her family have all been really supported of her TikTok success.
