Thirst Trap: The Fame. The Fantasy. The Fallout is a two-part docuseries directed by Trish Neufeld about how William White became a massive success on TikTok during the height of the pandemic by putting out videos of himself lip synching older songs. The most viral of those videos was of him lip synching to Barry Manilow’s hit song “Mandy,” His good looks and the oldies he was fake-singing to, his audience was strongly female and older than the audience for TikTok influencers were at the time.
Opening Shot: “In 2020, a viral sensation took over your mom with ‘Mandy'”, says a graphic laid over a shot of Niagara Falls, Ontario.
The Gist: In the documentary, Neufeld interviews William White, along with a group of his middle-aged female fans, some of which were in an online group called the Grotto Girls. At first, the fans that are interviewed talk about being a fan of White’s in reverent terms. He was a good old-fashioned heartthrob, and these women felt things while watching him that they haven’t felt in ages. When he was encouraged to offer a link to a PayPal account, money started pouring in, to the point where he made TikTok his full-time job. One of his fans said he paid him in the low-six figures over four years.
Boundaries started to be crossed at some point, though, by both White and his fans. Gifts would come to his parents’ house. Fan groups would show up in cities he was visiting in hopes of a random encounter. Then, he slept with one of his fans, nicknamed “DisneyMama,” and the jealously and anger took over.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Thirst Trap feels similar to other documentaries and docuseries about influencers, like The Age Of Influence and Born to Be Viral: The Real Lives of Kidfluencers.
Our Take: At a certain point, you can almost predict how a docuseries about influencers will go. You get a big dose of what made the influencer(s) go viral, and you hear from fans that became almost obsessed with the people that they saw on their screens. Then the toxic aspects of virality inevitably come up, whether it’s about the influencer losing their sense of self as they feel obligated to constantly churn out content, the fans turn on the influencer or each other, or both.
So, even though most of the first episode of Thirst Trap seemed to revel in how White was able to attract an audience that other TikTokers at the time couldn’t, and they became so loyal that they basically helped him make a good living from his social feeds, you knew the other shoe was going to drop at some point.
The reason why we point this out is because Thirst Trap feels like a 70-minute documentary that’s been expanded to just over 2 hours. We’re not sure we needed the the half-hour or so that traced through all of the viral stuff that White put up and the activity of his most ardent fans. White was dreamy, he lip synched oldies, and middle-aged women swooned. That’s pretty much it. The more interesting part of this story — and that’s relative, because it’s not that interesting — is how the fans turned on each other and how poorly White handled it all.
But it’s not like this is some big downfall for White or anyone else; he’s still posting to TikTok and still has over 2 million followers. In his interview, White isn’t expressing any regret or remorse, because there is none to express; he’s still having fun with this level of internet fame.
It feels like this docuseries missed an opportunity to examine just why White’s most ardent fans would pay him all that money or pursue him like they’re teenagers swooning over a K-pop star. There isn’t really much of a deep examination into the lives of most of the fans that are interviewed, nor any commentary on why our inherent isolation as a society would generate intense parasocial relationships like these. It’s superficially about the horny moms and grandmothers who fell for this kid, how they turned on each other, and that’s about it.
Sex and Skin: There’s a lot of thirsty talk, and of course videos of White without a shirt, but it’s mostly tame stuff.
Parting Shot: White says that as the fans turned on each other, “I couldn’t trust anyone at this point. I needed to fight for my life.”
Sleeper Star: Storm, who was a fan of White’s and an influencer on both TT and OnlyFans (!), seemed to be one of the only fans interviewed who was over all the drama, and pissed at White for turning on his fans when things got ugly.
Most Pilot-y Line: We’re just going to say this right here: After hearing White’s side of the story, we’re not sure he’s a himbo who got lucky or a total freakin’ genius.
Our Call: Thirst Trap: The Fame. The Fantasy. The Fallout is a bit too long and a bit too superficial to offer any insight into why so many people watched William White or why they ended up turning on each other.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.