C.Come inside a shoebox studio with a stripper pole in midtown Manhattan that rents for $2,095 (£1,764) a month. Or an $800 (£674) home project unit with hand-painted kitchen walls. How about a luxury rental for $5,000 a month with marble countertops? Curious onlookers can see them all on Caleb Simpson’s TikTok, and they won’t be alone. Nearly 6 million people follow his short-form house tours, games he bills as “the MTV cradles of this generation.”
“Seeing inside someone’s house is one of the most intimate things you can do,” Simpson, 30, tells The Guardian. “And then there are the price points, what you pay for your space; people will be curious about it.”
Which is why, three months ago, he began approaching strangers in parks in Manhattan and Brooklyn, asking how much their rent was. Those who responded received a rather bold follow-up: can I go take a look inside?
“You’re going to get all sorts of comments, from ‘I love you’ to ‘I hate you,'” Simpson tells tenants. Photography: TikTok/calebwsimpson
“The first day I did it, it was pretty overwhelming and funny,” says Simpson. “The amount of people who laughed at me or snarled at me for asking that question was unbelievable. But at the end of the day, I had made my first video.”
The house tours began as a way to learn more about the lives of strangers after working at home alone during the pandemic left him “longing for human connection.” He’s a videographer, having worked in music marketing and for house DJs like Diplo, Blond:ish and Black Coffee, not a journalist, and says interviewing people on the street makes him nervous. He’ll perk up by jumping up and down before ambushing pedestrians, Billy on the Street style.
“I try to treat every situation like this is my best friend and I’ve known him for 10 years,” says Simpson, who uses only his iPhone to film tours.
Although the clips are typically just under two minutes long, Simpson typically spends around an hour with his sources. “Usually we only shoot for 15 minutes and then we sit down and chat some more,” she says.
Not all of Simpson’s videos are actual footage of the man on the street. Sure, it draws in passing strangers, but it also enlists friends to show their apartments and allows fans to submit their homes. Recently, he has worked with celebrities such as Shark Tank investor Barbara Corcoran and Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Haley Kalil, who have invited him into their homes.
“I will spend one day a week walking around asking people on the street,” he says. “Then I get input from the Google form, but I still treat all those people as strangers, because I’m literally meeting them for the first time in their homes.”
Someone once said, people want you to be authentic online. But that’s not true: they want you to be consistent
On TikTok, “man on the street” videos have more than 766 million views. It’s become a tried-and-true genre on the app, with hosts asking strangers about everything from their sex lives to how quickly they can answer random math equations. No matter how he finds subjects, Simpson always films the interviews vox pop style.
“It’s the format that people like to watch,” he explained. “Someone once said that people want you to be authentic online. But that’s not true: they want you to be consistent. people recognize [the] format and they like that. So does the algorithm.”
Simpson normally films for only 15 minutes, but stays and chats for an hour. Photography: TikTok/calebwsimpson
Simpson says that one in 10 strangers on the street will agree to take it into their homes. “I try to ask as many people as possible, not make preconceived notions of anyone and keep asking until I get a yes or maybe,” he says.
Many of Simpson’s home tours feature a certain type of creative, and Simpson will list his work in the caption of each post. Recent subjects have called themselves a YouTuber, management consultant, and influencer marketer. A “spiritual teacher” showed off the $12,000 (£10,112) apartment she shares with her partner, which had a closet full of Louboutin stilettos, multiple levels and an outdoor shower. Given New York’s current cost of living crisis and lack of affordable housing, it can be hard for the rest of us to see how the top 1% lives.
“You have to sit down and have a conversation with these people and tell them: you’re going to get all kinds of comments, from ‘I love you’ to ‘I hate you,’” says Simpson. “It’s unfortunate, because it’s impossible to tell someone’s whole story in 60 seconds. And to be honest, that’s why the show is doing so well: it’s easy to make decisions.”
Many of Simpson’s tours take place in neighborhoods like Williamsburg or Bushwick, where new development and high rents have had devastating effects on aging communities. “I don’t think that by showing what happens in the neighborhood I am contributing to [gentrification],” he says. “We can see the neighborhood change in real time, which is beneficial and educational, if anything. You hear about neighborhoods [changing], but unless you live there, you don’t see it on your face. But now you can watch it online.”
There’s a transactional nature to Simpson’s videos: If a subject consents, they’ll tag their name in the comments and say the exposure has led people to land their dream job or sell the art they displayed in their home.
“Influence is the most valuable asset right now, and it’s a form of influence to say you’ve been in one of these videos,” says Jeremy Cohen, a photographer and friend of Simpson’s who allowed him $5,700 (£4,809) into the apartment. in Brooklyn that he shares with three roommates. But Cohen made sure to specify that he is only responsible for a third of that rent, or $1,900 (£1,603). “I didn’t want to say the total, because I didn’t want it to seem like I’m just a ballplayer,” he explains.
Fritz Bacon, a 27-year-old filmmaker, let Simpson shoot his $2,700 (£2,278) East Village studio after running into him at a mutual friend’s Halloween party. During filming, Bacon accidentally showed thousands of dollars in fake prop money that he had been accumulating in his apartment.
“People in the comments were like, ‘I can’t believe he showed that, it’s so dangerous,’ and I didn’t even think about it,” Bacon says. “I quickly commented: ‘It’s prop money, please don’t rob me. Hundreds of thousands of people have seen that I have what appears to be half a million dollars in cash.”
Simpson plans to expand the series outside of New York and eventually the United States. Although he has more celebrity homes in the works, he says he’ll still be shooting with “normal people” about 80% of the time. She doesn’t feel the need to compete with Architectural Digest or Apartment Therapy, two outlets that often focus more on a home’s design than its owner’s story.
“Architectural Digest, in my opinion, is a bit outdated,” says Simpson. “I’m trying to make this more fun and enjoyable and real. If I went on tour with someone AD [also toured with]It’s going to be a different experience. I’m going to go in there and mess around in the apartment, have some fun, and not just talk about a table. At the end of the day, AD is more about the stuff, and I want more of the human.”
Source: news.google.com