When I was spending a month in Da Nang Vietnam, I was volunteering as an English teacher. I wasn’t making money for teaching so when the opportunity came up to make some money I took it right away. A Vietnamese man named Lin asked me if I would be open to filming TikTok shop ads for some clothes. I agreed because I needed the money.
When I got to the studio it was nothing like I expected. Me and one other English teacher walked into the 5 story building. As we walked up the stairs and the 2 big computer labs on each floor, we got many strange looks from the 100s of young Vietnamese people working on editing their TikTok ads. Then we reached the top floor where we were met with a ring light, a tripod and tons of weird sweaters and shirts.
For the next 2 hours we took turns putting on the most poorly made sweaters and lying to the camera about how comfy and cool they were. Not to mention the ideas behind the clothes made no sense; a twilight + one direction collaboration shirt?