It’s been a crowded television season, with audiences’ attention divided between campy hits like 9-1-1 and Doctor Odyssey, newcomers like The Pitt, and the established prestige offerings of Severance and White Lotus. But one of the hottest new shows online isn’t a television show at all — it’s a series of skits by TikTok creator Sydney Robinson— and they’re taking for-you-pages by storm.
“I wasn’t prepared,” Robinson tells me over cappuccinos while on a break from her Midtown office job. “No one is prepared for this.”
First posted on March 30, Robinson’s skit The Group Chat drops TikTok viewers directly into a friend group’s meltdown over an uninvited member to their girls night. Haley texts the group and says her boyfriend Justin will be tagging along for dinner, since he’s had such a rough day. Her friends aren’t stoked and drama ensues over whether the reservations should be changed, Haley’s idea ignored, or a full friend intervention staged. Robinson plays all of the characters, switching outfits and makeup to distinguish between the girls. When she posted the first skit on a lazy Sunday night, she thought it would be a fun addition to her account. On Monday morning, it was already at 8 million views. In the week since The Group Chat’s release and subsequent explosion, Robinson has gained roughly 100,000 followers every day — reaching 1 million followers as of Monday afternoon. The original skit has surpassed 29 million views, with everyone from TikTok active brands to celebrities like Leslie Jones, Bethenny Frankel, Hailey Bieber, and Charlie Puth clocking in to watch. Other skit creators have even made their own videos from bystanders’ perspectives. This isn’t the first time a storytime has captured TikTok’s attention (Who TF Did I Marry is already on the way to primetime treatment), but Robinson’s drama-filled chronicle is doing more than sparking its own discourse — Robinson tells Rolling Stone it’s proving that people are desperate for an entertainment refresh.
“People have really convinced themselves that this is based on real drama from my life, and there’s some girl in her room right now crying in the fetal position. That’s not what’s happening,” she says. “It’s like just an addictive thing to watch, like reality TV. When the tea is piping hot, it’s piping hot. But also the best kind of drama to hear is the drama that has nothing to do with you. It’s a universal experience.”
All of the episodes of The Group Chat currently released delve into popular issues of social etiquette and friendships, discussions that thrive on social media platforms. For Robinson, it was the drama and emotion that friend groups in crisis can often build that inspired her to write the series, and a classic reality television entry. “I was on a plane to Vegas for my day job and was watching Jersey Shore Family Vacation. There’s a scene when Mike [“The Situation” Sorrentino] gets out of jail and the whole house wakes up and starts running around. There’s this electric energy that changed the entire vibe. That concept of Mike’s name popping up on their phones and completely sending shockwaves through the house, I was like ‘There’s something there.’”
Comedy skits have been popular on the app since TikTok became mainstream in 2019, with dozens of creators building successful franchises through short form skits. There’s BistroHuddy, the restaurant comedy written by creator Drew Talbert that follows bistro staff as they deal with rude customers, an aggravating boss, and the woes of service work. Comedian Julian Sewell grew in fame with his character Paloma Diamond, an Oscar-seeking actress on a grueling and competitive press tour. The Nursery Nurse releases skit after skit of drama in a British daycare center, while Shawna Lander draws her 2 million followers in with tense showdowns between a wife and her nightmare, overbearing mother-in-law. These are all original characters, who have become synonymous with their creators’ accounts, and in some cases, are treated like legitimate television characters, subject to the same dissection and discussion. It’s not a coincidence that this content, skits split into dozens of parts, is on the rise at the same time TikTok has popularized posting full TV shows in three-minute intervals on the app.
But this rapport with audiences is usually built over months, and sometimes years of posting updates to the stories — and characters lives — something Robinson has achieved in less than eight days. The series has been so inescapable on the app that Robinson even had a guest star in the latest episode, musician Charlie Puth, who voiced the long-derided boyfriend Justin. Puth first started commenting on the series by the second episode, and after Robinson received a DM saying he liked the series, she actually delayed the release of the next part until Puth was able to join via voice over. It meant she had to refilm an already completed skit — but she says she was more than happy to. “He’s a very nice and supportive person,” Robinson says. “[When]
he messaged me, he made a joke about playing Justin. I’m sure he was joking. I’m me. He’s Charlie Puth. I was like, ‘You don’t realize how much you’re gonna regret making that joke.’”
While Robinson wasn’t expecting her small drama series to take off in such a big way, she tells Rolling Stone she is excited to see how the story develops even after there’s a resolution about this one day. “This was the dinner. I have plans for a Bachelorette, a birthday, a ton of different things. There will be answers tonight. But The Group Chat will go on.”
