James Clark blew up on TikTok in 2019 after a goofy dance video he posted to make his friends laugh went viral. Six years and over 3.7 million TikTok followers later, his content looks different, but its charisma remains the same at its core.
Clark, a junior marketing major who transferred to UT from UT-San Antonio this semester, stopped posting in 2021 after losing access to his original account. He returned to content creation in early 2024, a rebrand that consisted of Bob Dylan guitar covers and heated rants about mechanical engineering classes.
“I don’t want to bug my friends with all my ADHD thoughts,” Clark said. “So, I just post them on the internet.”
His recent videos center around his new life at UT, from messing with Waymos downtown to dealing with heckling pledges in West Campus.
“There’s nothing he won’t say to a camera that he’ll say to his friends in private,” said Gavin Fain, who met Clark in middle school.
When Fain experienced major grief this year, he said Clark rushed back to their hometown of Houston.
“He put everything down to be there for me for weeks at a time and constantly supported me through my ups and downs,” Fain said.
Clark, who posts under the TikTok handle @jamesisnotverynice, talks about friends like Fain in almost every video. He only switches gears to show off one of the many “pointless” hobbies in his arsenal, some of which include unicycling, juggling and yo-yoing. His five singles on Spotify, which he released after his rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” went viral, continue to climb after accumulating nearly four million streams in less than two years.
“It’s pretty much just a circus,” Clark said.
Bailey Bass, whose TikTok bio reads “Environmentalist 1st, James’s girlfriend 2nd,” frequently guest stars in said circus.
“The numbers aren’t a thing in my mind,” Bass said. “It just feels like, ‘Oh, this is a video of my boyfriend talking about me,’ not ‘Oh my god, so many people are watching this.’”
On their first date, the result of an Instagram DM nearly 10 years removed from a brief summer camp romance before seventh grade, Clark played “Shake the Frost” by Tyler Childers. In a recent video, he said he plans to play it at their wedding.
“His fans are really nice to me, so it hypes me up,” Bass said.
After graduating, Clark said he plans to leverage his social media success into a short career in investing in property and doing real estate.
“I want to hopefully retire by 35,” Clark said. “Be able to just enjoy life.”
