Backstage Pass: Nikki Glaser

Uncovering what's really propelling the comedian's recent online growth.

On the heels of the Golden Globes announcing Nikki Glaser will host the awards show in 2025, I want to introduce a new recurring segment: Backstage Pass.

In this article type, I’ll take you behind the scenes of a particularly instructive viral video, trend, or campaign. We’ll take a look at some underlying data, and make sense of what’s really going on beneath the surface.

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A video recently came across my Instagram feed of Nikki Glaser talking about her newfound presence on TikTok, where she has quickly grown her following to 300K+ followers in the past few months since enlisting UpHigh LLC.

uphighllc

A post shared by @uphighllc

I initially assumed the bulk of these followers came on the heels of her fantastic performance at The Roast of Tom Brady, which Netflix aired live on May 5th.

I’ve had first-hand experience with a similar phenomenon.

Whenever Viggo performed a set on Britain’s Got Talent last year, his TikTok would gain about 25K followers a day for the ensuing three days after it. Not only because of how many Brits watched the live broadcast, but because of the second-life the clips achieved online, particularly on TikTok.

I figured Nikki was likely experiencing something similar. People watched her crush at the Brady Roast, or saw a @netflixisajoke clip on their FYP, and went, “Who was that? I have to follow her”.

But in the above podcast clip, Glaser attributes the rapid TikTok growth to the fact that her posts are now more “freeform” at the guidance of UpHigh LLC, and because their team tells her about trends to capitalize on, and so on.

However, when I pulled the data on every post from her TikTok in 2024, I found that something else entirely was catapulting her follower count.