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Whether he’s spilling the beans on his latest breakup or explaining how “sharing” dominates his romantic life, Kennedy “Ken” Eurich has managed to turn oversharing into a full-fledged career.
“I’ve always been an open book like my whole life, a little bit more,” the 22-year-old tells Yahoo Life about her sudden rise to internet stardom.
Eurich has amassed more than 1 million followers on TikTok by revealing the most intimate and arguably scariest moments of her life, has a personal collaboration with Steve Madden, and has been dubbed “the next Emma Chamberlain” by her colleagues. a surreal reality for a Pennsylvania native who worked on a farm before social media fame.
“I’m living my life somehow and I’ve managed to turn it into a career,” says Eurich, whose meteoric rise has been exacerbated by the openness of the content. One of the videos that catapulted him to TikTok stardom included a humorous reprise of him. A relationship gone wrong in which Eurich pooped his pants — yes, pooped — while at a guy’s house. But it was a no-brainer, he says, to relive the moment for the world to see.
But its openness goes beyond the stool(s). Eurich has been quite candid about his struggle with anxiety on his page, sharing his experience of being diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and starting medication on TikTok.
Viewers praised Eurich for being willing to share the ups and downs of starting Lexapro; “Normalization of anxiety medications is critical,” reads a sample comment. But these are not all positive reviews and endorsements. As his following grows, the content creator feels more and more that he has a target on his back and no shortage of followers ready to “kick him when he’s down.”
“People love to hate people, you know? People watch me and I feel like that sometimes [they’re] waiting to slip,” she says. “I know that whatever I say, if I’m sensitive about mental health or anything, it can and will be used against me. For example, if someone notices that I’m feeling a little down and struggling with mental health, I sometimes feel that makes the hateful comments even more. Those who don’t like me say that we should kick him when he falls.”
Eurich says having her own space has helped her well-being a lot.
“My apartment is my safe place. I feel like no one can hurt me. It’s very comforting,” she says.
Her pets, Lil Ma, Baby and Minx, are also big factors in her mental health.
“My animals especially are my number one thing, I think they help my mental health more than any medication or talking to people,” she said. “I feel like my pets are something that really helps me. Recently, having a dog gets me out of the house… I think that’s something that a lot of people with mental health struggle with, getting up every day. Taking care of someone else has changed my life. really changed.”
When he first opened his account, Eurich was living with his parents and attending community college. Now he brings in more money than his mom and dad, which was difficult for anyone to calculate when he was still living at home.
“It was weird, I was almost fighting for independence. I felt very independent, I was making my own money, but I was still a kid. I’m still a kid. So it made it weird . . . When I was living at home, the stress on my family dynamics . Because no one really knew what I was going to do. Like, overnight I was making more money than my parents, and they were like, ‘How can we say no to you? We’re controlling you?’ Eurich explains.
His success has also led to attacks of alienation from his audience, as his current life seems so different from the content that many previously resonated with. Eurich said he struggled to relate in an appropriate way.
“I started social media for myself, and even though parts of my life are changing like crazy, because of social media, I’m still sitting in my room every day, waking up, drinking my coffee,” he says. “I’m not a movie star, you know, I go on the red carpet.”
Still, Eurich acknowledges the privilege of having a following that holds him accountable and focuses on why he really started publishing.
“Having an audience that is so invested in my fitness has helped me because you don’t realize it. [but] sometimes succeeding, you get so excited about yourself that you’re like, ‘Oh look what I got’ and ‘I can do that now’ and ‘I can do that. And sometimes that can rub your audience the wrong way because they’re like, “wait a minute, I can’t relate to any of this anymore.” It definitely keeps you in line,” he says.
She notes that this summer served as a major reality check as she faced considerable backlash for buying designer handbags and the frequency with which she posted them.
“There’s a fine line. You can talk about your successes and celebrate yourself, but you have to remember who got you there and what they want to see. Because that’s the most important thing in a business like this. If you don’t have people who love you, support you, like you, what are you doing?” he says.
Eventually, Eurich found himself withdrawing from social media at one point — in part because of the effect it was having on his mental health.
“The key to social media is engaging with other people’s opinions.” “Worrying too much about what other people think of me is not good, especially for my mental health [as] someone who struggles with anxiety. I always think of everything as it is. So having other people get involved in my life and think too much for me is like, “Well, I can’t do this forever.” I would like to start my own business; it’s something I’m working on right now. [And] I slowly backed off from this social media presence. I think social media is a great thing and it’s done so many amazing things for me, but it’s almost like, “You know what? I’ve seen what I need to see. It was real.'”
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