TikTok Is a Hellscape of People Staying in Hurricane Milton’s Path For Clout

All along the coast of Florida, residents of the Sunshine State are preparing their homes and businesses to withstand the Category 4 force of Hurricane Milton. Millions of Floridians are leaving their homes as local and national officials encourage residents to heed mandatory evacuation orders. But online, staying put and riding out the storm has become the go-to way to get some easy clout — and it’s enraging people who are actually stuck where they are. 

Milton is scheduled to make landfall sometime between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, bringing with it the potential for 10 to 12 feet of storm surge in an area already heavily damaged by Hurricane Helene. “I can say without any dramatization whatsoever, if you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you’re gonna die,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said on CNN. “If we have that predicted storm surge, it is not survivable.”

But on the social media app TikTok, some users who are ignoring the evacuation orders are using this time to post as much as possible, some hawking products or showing off their expensive cars in the process. “Yall evacuating while I’m staying home in flood zone A, laying down on my 3000 dollar couch waiting for the hurricane to [pass] over,” posted one user, seemingly spurred on by the thousands of comments urging him to evacuate before the storm made landfall. “The media is rage-baiting everybody into thinking this is some catastrophic thing. It’s gonna be bad. It’s gonna suck. But it’s not gonna be as bad as you guys think as long as you can swim,” said another. He’s since posted nine update videos, all assuring his followers that he’ll be fine in his high rise — with all except one netting over 1 million views. One Florida influencer, Mike Smalls Jr., spent Hurricane Helene streaming live on Kick from a shoddy campsite. He’s repeating the experiment for Milton, this time with another flimsy tent and an air mattress. (He did not respond to Rolling Stone‘s request for comment, but his ongoing stream has shown him struggling to keep water out of his air mattress.) Another used his hurricane content to also plug his sports betting empire. “This ground will be underwater tomorrow but your bank account won’t be if you take this bet.” 

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Posting through it — the term for people who use social media even in times of catastrophe — isn’t anything new. But while people are using TikTok to search for any information regarding the hurricane, clout chasers might be making money in the process. Take, for instance, a post-apocalyptic edit of Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.” Since Hurricane Helene, the song has been used in over 300,000 videos showing storm damage and flooding disasters. Now, videos from Hurricane Milton are joining the mix. And for TikTok users that participate in the creator program, videos over 1 million views, which are likely to grow in the coming days, could mean upwards of $10,000 per video.

Much of the frustration online seems to stem from people who have the means to evacuate and have chosen to stay with the full knowledge that they could be risking their lives. When momfluencer Cecily Bauchmann posted on Sunday that she and her family would be purposefully flying to Walt Disney World for vacation and were “keeping an eye” on the storm, people flooded her comments until she deleted the video and all her Walt Disney-related Instagram stories. (Bauchmann did not respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment.) And when Caroline Calloway, the internet it-girl turned author, posted that she would be remaining in her Saratoga home during the storm, people — with the same exact energy — assumed she was doing it for attention. “I’m not evacuating for the hurricane. I live in Sarasota, on the beach, in evacuation zone A. For more great advice, buy my second book! It’s called Elizabeth Wurtzel and Caroline Calloway’s Guide to Life. It’s about to come out if I survive! It’s an advice book 😉 Cute!!!!! <3,” she posted on Twitter. “I have champagne and four generations of Floridians in my veins. It’ll be fine.”

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In an interview with Rolling Stone, Calloway confirmed that she was staying home even though she was located in a mandatory evacuation zone, but said that she was really remaining in her 16-floor building to take care of her older family friends who live there. She says she made the decision several days ago, and many apartments are also hosting family members who feel safer in the large building than in single family homes. “These aren’t just neighbors,” she tells Rolling Stone. “They’re my family.” Calloway says that when she started posting through it, she had already attended her building’s hurricane preparedness meeting, and was shocked at the attention her posts have received. “Every person I have ever known in my life has texted me in the past 24 hours. Friends. Lovers. Celebrities who I didn’t even know had my phone number.” 

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While Calloway declined to name the aforementioned celebs (“I’m not gonna blow up their spot for a Rolling Stone article that may or may not paint me in a snarky light”) she was adamant that people who assume she’s staying for clout are both being “hurtful” and probably wouldn’t make the same criticism of a male writer. “He’s staying to help his elderly neighbors?” she imagined. “What a saint.”

As Hurricane Milton makes its way toward Florida, officials still say if people have the chance to evacuate, they should move while they still have the opportunity. Or take the TikTok option — post until you can’t.