Complaining about signing a lease in East Flatbush.
Ranting about the expensive clothes you won’t wear on the subway.
Whining about how you have a great job, boyfriend and apartment — and still don’t like the city.
These are some of the ways New Yorkers have gone viral online in the past year.
Another thing they had in common? They’d all moved to the city from elsewhere – making them “transplants,” as the city’s new arrivals are known on TikTok.
When transplant Nimay Ndolo uploaded multiple videos to TikTok after signing a lease for a place in East Flatbush in September, one got over 1 million views.
“You wonder why I hate my life,” she said to the camera. “It’s making my life a living hell. All my commutes to get anywhere, even to Williamsburg, are an hour.”
“I basically live in Canarsie,” she yelled, adding that she was “in the middle of nowhere, in a fourth-floor walkup without a couch.”
As the video spread across sites like TikTok and X, the site formerly known as Twitter, thousands of comments flooded in. On X, it got more than 7 million views, with thousands of people resharing it.
“Please please stop moving to nyc!!!!” urged one reply.
Ndolo’s video is part of a genre unto itself on TikTok: transplants with hot, usually negative takes about living in New York City.
These videos can receive thousands of interactions and generate their own “response videos,” known on TikTok as “stitches.”
People in videos rant about how there isn’t much to do in the city but go out for drinks and dinner. Another transplant complained about the lack of a Whole Foods in the Bronx – and wound up getting fired after accusations of racism.
In early December, TikTok user Sliimkim found herself in the center of a viral storm, after posting a video about being unable to dress in her expensive clothing on the subway out of a fear that she’ll get robbed.
“I am deathly afraid of the men underground,” she said in the one-minute clip that amassed…
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