By Tristan Weisenbach
Arts & Entertainment Editor
It was a warm June day nearly a year ago when Pearl Cooley was at a local In-N-Out Burger restaurant in California filming what would be one of the first of her many viral TikTok videos. She propped her phone up in the outdoor eating section of the restaurant, hit record, and began to act as if she was auditioning for “America’s Got Talent.” Her now famous “audition” song — her own rendition of Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog” — is what ultimately led her to be recognized everywhere she goes.
After singing, she quickly grabbed her phone and ran away, recording the entire experience and uploading it to TikTok. Before she knew it, she had hundreds of thousands of likes. She was a viral sensation overnight.
Cooley, who now has over 1.4 million followers and 80 million likes in total, is known across the social media app for her comedic videos that she films in public places and posts to her account, @pearliesparklez. She often goes up to strangers, asks them to hold her phone, and then does something outlandish to get a reaction from those around her — whether that be singing, performing a skit or just being all-out wild.
Many fans often comment on her videos praising her confidence to be able to do silly, crazy things around strangers in public. However, building up that self love can be very difficult — especially when rising to internet fame so quickly like Cooley did.
When she first began posting videos on TikTok, Cooley had just recently gotten out of a toxic relationship. She explained that she was tired of not believing in herself and was “hungry to love and respect” herself.
“I started posting on TikTok, and at first, I was just a complete mental wreck and all I did was post thirst traps, to be honest, because I had no confidence,” Cooley said. “I just felt the lowest I've ever felt about myself in my whole entire life.”
After feeling this way for so long, she decided that she would dedicate a lot of time and effort into her own self discovery process by doing things such as positive affirmations. Now, she says she is proud of the accomplishments she’s made.
“The last three years I've been doing nothing but dealing with my past traumas and working on myself and learning to love and respect myself,” Cooley said. “And finally, for the first time in my life, I finally love myself and respect myself so much and think very highly of myself.”
Cooley was born in Arizona but was raised on a farm in Missouri alongside her 11 siblings. Ever since she was young, she always thought of herself as a comedian and a “goofy kid,” and she continues to hold onto her dream of becoming an actress to this day. She loves crafty activities like beading and finds joy in going on outdoor adventures — whether that be spending the day relaxing on the beach, hiking in the woods or just touring someplace new.
She began her TikTok account three years ago, originally posting videos about these daily excursions that she enjoys going on. Her goal was to find her niche on the app and discover where she fit in.
“At first I kind of just posted random stuff. I would post a lot of things like, ‘hey guys, I'm doing this’ or ‘hey guys I'm doing this,’” Cooley said. “I’d kind of just go on adventures and post my adventures.”
After posting about her daily life for over a year, she had finally amassed about 100,000 followers on the app. Despite this, she was still displeased with the content that she was posting and wanted to branch out and be more herself on the app. Cooley knew that she wanted to post more comedy videos to make other people laugh like she does today, but she found it difficult to do at first.
Her friends weren’t into social media like she was and her family was not as willing to support her growing popularity on the app. But, after pushing herself to go out in public to film videos and face her fears by improving on her own self confidence, she finally did it.
“The first time I did it, I blew up and got quite a bit of views and people were telling me to keep doing it,” Cooley said. “From then on, I just kept doing it. I've changed it up a bit and I've done different things, but still, all my content nowadays is mostly like 90% messing with the public to get people's reaction and just being goofy in public and not caring.”
Cooley is proud to be where she is today and she credits her own personal mental health journey for shaping her into the person that she is. Unfortunately, many of the mental health struggles that she’s incurred in recent years have stemmed directly from her TikTok stardom.
One of the biggest setbacks she experienced was soon after she went viral. Having gained so many followers, she explained how lots of fans and other social media influencers had reached out to her wanting to collaborate with her for videos and projects. While this may seem like an incredible opportunity, Cooley warned that it isn’t as great as it may seem.
“A lot of people will reach out to you and want to connect with you and be associated with you just because you have a lot of followers — they don’t really, honestly care for you,” Cooley said. “A lot of them didn't even care for me as a person, but just that I was getting so many views and they wanted on that. They were clout chasing.”
For instance, Cooley mentioned that she got involved with a California businessman who said he would teach her how to better monetize off of TikTok.
“He was like, ‘with that amount of [followers], you should be making more,’” Cooley said. “He was going to teach me, and I was going to promote him and his hypnotherapy and stuff, so I helped him, he helped me.”
However, according to Cooley, the man was spreading false rumors and misleading claims about her behind her back at the same time, going as far as creating a Reddit page to paint her out as a scammer. She even received death threats from people online because of it.
“He was trying to destroy me and my name behind my back,” Cooley said. “It just hurt and broke my heart because so many people believed it. There's a few viral videos about it and so many people had turned on me.”
It wasn’t until she disassociated with the man and removed herself from engaging with him that she began to feel better about the situation and could work on healing herself further.
“As soon as I stopped being around him, I started physically doing perfectly fine again. It was weird,” Cooley said. “I just learned that I'm going to be so much more guarded and careful with who I associate myself with and be more observant and listen to my gut when it's trying to tell me that they're not the right influence for me.”
This traumatic experience has helped her to realize that her own wellbeing and self pride is much more important than anything that anyone else can offer her. Cooley said that she tries to stay humble and not sell herself short, which she says is one of the most important things of being a successful social media influencer.
“I've seen so many people blow up and get famous and lose themselves and they get lost in the lifestyle or they can’t handle it and they kind of just go crazy,” she said.
Mental health advocacy, especially when it comes to social media, has become increasingly important for Cooley. If she had not become so famous on TikTok, she said she would probably have chosen to become a therapist to help others who have struggled like she has. However, she says there is something to be learned from going through so many hard times in the past.
“People say sorry for the traumas or hard things I've gone through, but honestly I've always been grateful for every hard thing that I've ever been through and overcome because every time I overcome it, I become stronger and better than I was before that thing happened to me,” Cooley said.
Moving forward, Cooley hopes to begin posting more videos about her mental health journey in hopes of connecting with other individuals who she could make an impact on. One way she hopes to achieve this is by continuing a concept that she began last fall. She posted numerous videos that incorporated strangers that she met in public where she encouraged them to think positively and be proud of themselves.
“I would just bring a big tall standing mirror in public, and I would have random people come and practice doing positive affirmations, and those videos did really well and people really enjoyed them,” Cooley said. “It inspired people to start doing positive affirmations themselves.”
Cooley says that she will always continue to post comedy videos and continue on with her signature style of asking “kind souls” in public to “hold [her] phone for a quick TikTok.” She mentioned many fond memories of individuals that she’s met through making these videos who she will always remember, such as a teacher who filmed her in a Walmart and later asked to interview her, or a woman who saved her from crashing into a parked car while she was sledding down a hill one winter for a TikTok video.
Now 33 and having recently moved to California, Cooley spends around 20 to 30 hours per week making TikTok videos and livestreaming on the app. Despite her mental health challenges she faced after becoming famous on social media, Cooley is grateful for it, as she says it has helped to make her the self-loving and confident individual that she is today. And what is the one piece of advice that she says helped her get through it all?
“Believing in yourself,” she said. “If you believe in yourself, there's nothing you cannot accomplish. Because when I started believing in myself — really believing in myself — that's when I started seeing success.”
Clarification: This article has been edited to reflect a condensed summary of Cooley's experience with the California businessman.
