Josh Richards is one of TikTok’s most popular content creators and an integral part of the Sway House — a group that he’s not too pleased is being used for clout by other influencers looking to get a leg up in the industry.
Josh Richards, who boasts over 22 million followers on TikTok (in no small part due to showing off his abs in every other video), feels that some creators are taking advantage of the Sway House’s kindness to grow their own platforms and split.
Richards spoke on the situation during an episode of Barstool Sports’ ‘BFFs’ podcast on October 13, claiming that he had at first wanted to help other creators get started by giving them a boost.
“I knew how to pump out a million videos back to back,” he explained. “And I’d do five a day. And then I would see these other kids who were starting to blow up, and I was like, ‘Okay, if I give them a little bit of direction, they could be huge.’”
However, co-host Dave Portnoy noted that sometimes these kinds of relationships can go south — a sentiment that Richards agreed with, sharing his own experiences with stars just trying to use the Sway House.
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“There’s so many people that come to us, and they’ll start filming at our house,” he continued. “I think we’ve gotten better at not letting this happen, but they would just use us for videos. They would sleep over, they would always be like, ‘Get in our videos!’”
“The thing that sucks about that is that you don’t really know who’s out to get you anymore and then who’s just really trying to be there, be your homie and just vibe with you,” he added. “That really sucks.”
Richards isn’t the first internet star to make such claims, by far; YouTuber Jake Paul has also infamously accused other creators of using Team 10 to blow up and subsequently “act like they don’t know nobody,” leading to quite a bit of drama in his own realm.
While Richards’ statement has yet to be called out by other TikTokers, it’s not hard to believe that someone would try to piggyback off of someone else’s success in the age of social media fame.
