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TikTok, the app popular with Gen-Z, allows users to create videos showing off their humor, talent, and/or pets–to name just a few. Dancers like 15-year-old Charli D’Amelio (the “queen of TikTok”) have achieved fame and entertainment contracts from the app. Another popular creator on TikTok is Adam Martinez. (Online, he uses the username Adam Ray Okay.) Martinez racked up millions of followers with his original character named Rosa–and recently appeared in a video with the controversial YouTube celebrity Jeffree Star. In a recent interview, Martinez offered some tips to up-and-coming TikTok creators.

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TikTok | Costfoto / Barcroft Media via Getty Images

How Rosa got her start on the video sharing app

Paper magazine interviewed Martinez last month. He and the interviewer discussed his success on the video sharing app. Now, Rosa has also expanded to other social media platforms.

“No matter what social media feed you scroll, Okay’s Rosa videos have been disseminated there as clips and reaction videos,” Paper reported. But how did Martinez get his start, and develop the famous character of Rosa?

“I had downloaded the TikTok app and … I wasn’t really thinking of making my own content,” Martinez told the magazine. But he got the idea for Rosa, and took off creating content.

“Everybody knows this Rosa character and I felt that she had been forgotten about,” he explained. Martinez currently has over 5 million followers, but he started small.

“I had six followers when I first started,” Martinez said. “I was posting makeup and I gained 14 followers. And then I ended up doing something else and it worked out for me and now that’s my biggest platform.”

TikTok star has tips for newbies to the app

So, how did he become a famous creator on the app? He gave some advice to TikTok beginners in the interview.

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The TikTok logo | OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images

“The ‘for you’ page is going to be your best friend,” Martinez explained. “That’s where I saw so many different talents. I was able to see so many different varieties of comedy, or art, or even makeup.” The For You page on TikTok, much like the Discover page on Instagram, is where you see things you’re interested in–based on what you’ve liked and hashtags you’ve used. As Martinez emphasized, it can be inspirational because it’s “where you see all the talent.” The TikTok star continued:

If you have something specific that you want to discover, you can hashtag that and there’s millions and millions of something that you want to discover all on one page. So whether you’re going there for one thing to look for or you’re going to just see everything, you’ll find it there.

TikTok star Adam Ray Okay encourages early users to ‘keep going’

When asked if he thought TikTok was the “future of comedy,” Martinez said, “for sure.” The popular creator went on to explain why he believed that:

It gives you 60 seconds to just be exactly who you want to be. And people are so creative. So it’s so good and that’s all it is. It’s just so much content that you can release it to so many different creators and so many different talents. So I feel like TikTok is for sure the future of just everything.

Paper also inquired about the impact of time limit on TikTok. Most videos are 15 seconds or less–although now, they can be as long as 60 seconds. Does the time restriction–not to mention people’s ever-decreasing attention spans–put pressure on TikTok creators to be even more creative?

“Different content creators work differently,” Martinez responded. “So if you are able to be who you are and if it’s funny [or] people enjoy it, they’re going to stick with you.” However, he did have some advice when it came to TikTok beginners. Martinez told Paper:

You’re on this huge platform and not everybody is going to enjoy what you’re doing. So there’s always going to be that other person who does. So even if you don’t get noticed right off the bat, you should just keep going.

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