Over the weekend, Dolly Parton appeared to launch an official TikTok account, which, turns out, was a fake all along. In the video, the country legend appears to say: “Why hello, I guess I’m on TikTok! I just dropped in to say everything’s gonna be OK, you keep the faith.” The account quickly amassed more than 700,000 followers, and the video itself got more than five million likes. Come Monday, though, the account was taken down.
This morning, a spokesperson for Dolly confirmed via the Today show that the account had been faked, explaining that an unverified user had taken an old video from Parton’s Imagination Library and “doctored it,” asking fans to “take a closer look” at the clip. A TikTok spokesperson also confirmed that the video had been removed for violating community guidelines around impersonation.
This is definitely not the first time fans have been scammed by TikTok celeb content. Remember the Tom Cruise deepfake videos? Likewise, back in July, Billie Eilish appeared to go live on TikTok, resulting in a flood of fan comments and gifts via the platform’s in-app tipping system. The account, however, was not verified, and the questions she was answering did not come from the Live’s comments section. Stay safe out there, fellow TikTokers!
