How to Get Famous Online—From Someone Who Did It by Being Herself

You’ve thought about posting. Like, actually posting. Not the safe little “photo dump” where you caption it “life lately” and call it a day. The real stuff. The story you tell your friends that makes them scream. The take that lives in your Notes app. The video draft called “final FINAL 2” that you keep watching back until your soul leaves your body.

Then your brain starts acting like the comments section is already open. You imagine someone from high school stitching it. Your coworker somehow finding it. Your aunt texting, “Is this you?” You close the app, tell yourself you’ll do it later, but that never happens. 

On It’s Always Something, host Davis Roe breaks down her unfiltered tips for growing on social media as someone who built a following by being, in her own words, “so annoying.” If you’ve been sitting on content ideas or just need permission to finally post the weird thing, these tips are for you.

Treat social media like your portfolio (because it basically is)

Roe’s whole point is that social media isn’t just entertainment anymore. It’s searchable you. People look you up the same way they look up a restaurant menu. She says “every single TikTok is like a lottery ticket”—post enough and eventually you’ll hit—but over time, those posts start adding up to something bigger. They become a body of proof of who you are, how you think, and what you show up as online.

Here’s how to use that idea without making it deep and corporate:

• Pick 3 things you want to be known for. Not 12. Not “everything.” Just 3.
  
  • Example: “outfit videos with a POV,” “storytimes,” “beauty recs that are actually honest”
    
• Make your bio match the content you want. If your content is chaotic storytime energy, your bio should not read like a LinkedIn intern wrote it.
  
• Start a simple content folder. Screenshots of comments you get, ideas you say out loud, things you want to rant about. That folder becomes your pipeline when your brain goes blank.

Roe’s future-looking take is basically, people will treat social media like a full portfolio in 10 to 15 years. So you might as well build yours on purpose now.

Stop trying to blend in, the internet already has 400,000 versions of ‘normal’

Roe says it’s easier to do well online than people think, especially when you’re not what people see all day. Her example is perfect and hilarious: if her grandmother started posting cooking videos, she would “have to give some spice.” And people would eat it up because they haven’t seen her exact grandma-energy before.

Use that logic like a cheat code:

• Ask one question: What do people get from you that they can’t get from a random trending creator?
  
• Turn that into a repeatable format. Formats are how you go from “one viral moment” to “oh wait, she always does this.”
  
  • Outfit videos, but with your mom roasting you
    
  • Beauty recs, but only “products I bought at 2 a.m. and now defend with my life”
    
  • Storytimes, but you always start with the most insane detail first

If you are making the same video as everyone else, you are forcing people to pick between you and someone they already follow. That’s a terrible game.

Talk to the camera like you’re voice-noting your best friend

A lot of people can film, edit, caption, and trend-hop. The thing most people can’t do is talk like a real person on camera without freezing.

Roe says the talking videos and the “super annoying, unedited” stuff is what did best for her. She also says, “bring your full energy and just yap about something and sound like you know what you’re talking about.”

Practical ways to make that happen without hating yourself:

• Start with a one-sentence opener you can repeat forever.
  
  • “Ok I have to tell you what just happened.”
    
  • “If you’re thinking about posting and you’re scared, listen.”
    
  • “This is for anyone who keeps deleting drafts.”
    
• Give yourself one take. One take forces you to stay alive in it. It also makes you funnier.
  
• Use the “say it out loud” rule. If you would never say that sentence out loud to a friend, do not say it on camera.

Perfect doesn’t make people stay. You do.

Post the version you’re embarrassed by, that’s usually the one that hits

Roe fully admits she stalks her old videos and cringes. “I’m like, holy crap. You are so annoying. Like, what are you saying? What are you doing?” Then she says the important part: “But that is what got me to where I am.”

This is the cycle most people get trapped in: You film something. You watch it back. You start beefing with your own face. You decide your laugh is illegal. You delete it. You promise you will re-film it “better.” You never do.

So here’s the move:

• Choose one trait you normally try to hide and let it live on camera.
  
  • loud laugh
    
  • fast talking
    
  • dramatic facial expressions
    
  • weird niche obsession
    
• Leave one “imperfection” in the edit on purpose.
  
  • the breath before you start talking
    
  • the moment you lose your train of thought and find it again
    
  • the accidental laugh when you roast yourself

“Don’t be scared to be annoying,” Roe says. “Don’t be scared to put yourself out there.”

Prepare for hate the same way you prepare for rain, it exists

Roe’s point isn’t that hate is rare. It’s that people will twist anything if they want to. She talks about dipping into Reddit and seeing “wild things,” including a thread accusing her of being racist because she said she was “in the back of the bus” on a Frontier flight. “The internet will take what they want—spin it and make another.”

So you need a way to stay grounded when the internet starts acting like the internet:

• Decide your values before you post.
  
  • If you know who you are, comments bounce off faster.
    
• Do a quick reality check.
  
  • “Would I take life advice from this person?”
    
  • “Do they know me?”
    
  • “Is this even about me, or are they just projecting?”
    
• Have a rule for engagement.
  
  • ignore, delete, block
    
  • respond once, then log off
    
  • never argue with someone who is committed to misunderstanding you

“If you don’t think you’re a good person and you don’t believe it, then you’re going to believe the hate,” Roe says. The goal is to be solid in yourself first.

For more, tune into It’s Always Something with Davis Roe.

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