Erynn Chambers, better known under her

TikTok TikTok, known in mainland China and Hong Kong as Douyin (), is a social media and Short-form content, short-form online video platform owned by Chinese Internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which may range in duration f ...

username rynnstar (born 1992), is an American

social media influencer A social media influencer, or simply influencer (also known as an online influencer), is a person who builds a grassroots online presence through engaging content such as photos, videos, and updates. This is done by using direct audience intera ...

, activist, and teacher. She is best known for her work on

. She is also credited as a co-author on the

country A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. When referring to a specific polity, the term "country" may refer to a sovereign state, state with limited recognition, constituent country, ...

song " Beer Beer, Truck Truck", as a result of a viral video she made satirizing country music.

Career

Chambers taught music at an elementary school in

Charlotte, North Carolina Charlotte ( ) is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina and the county seat of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, Mecklenburg County. The population was 874,579 at the 2020 United ...

. She is the creator of the popular account @Rynnstar on TikTok, which she started during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

and before the 2020 surge in Black Lives Matter protests. On TikTok, she posts about a variety of topics, including linguistics, history, musical theater, and activism. The murder of

George Floyd George Perry Floyd Jr. (October 14, 1973 – May 25, 2020) was an African-American man who was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during an arrest made after a store clerk suspected Floyd had used a counterfeit tw ...

shifted her research towards a greater focus on racial equity. According to ''

People The term "the people" refers to the public or Common people, common mass of people of a polity. As such it is a concept of human rights law, international law as well as constitutional law, particularly used for claims of popular sovereignty. I ...

'', "What makes Chambers' content so special is that it meets her followers where they are without coddling them." In 2021, ''

USA Today ''USA Today'' (often stylized in all caps) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth in 1980 and launched on September 14, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headq ...

'' described her as "one of the most important creators raising awareness of the Black experience and racism on TikTok".

Podcasts

Chambers has three

podcast A podcast is a Radio program, program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. Typically, a podcast is an Episode, episodic series of digital audio Computer file, files that users can download to a personal device or str ...

s: ''Hot Tea Hot Takes'', ''Close Encounters of the Blerd Kind'', and ''The Wordy & Nerdy Show.''

TikTok

Activism

Chambers' TikTok includes advocacy and information about

racial equality Racial equality is when people of all Race (human categorization), races and Ethnic group, ethnicities are treated in an egalitarian/equal manner. Racial equality occurs when institutions give individuals legal, moral, and Civil and political r ...

, including a video she posted in July 2020 in which she used TikTok's "duet" function to add commentary to another user's video. She was inspired to create her video after watching a TikTok about how statistics are manipulated to create the false impression of greater violence perpetrated by Black Americans. In her video, titled "About y'alls favorite 'statistics, she criticized the argument that Black people are responsible for more violent crime in the form of a jingle, singing "Black neighborhoods are overpoliced, so of course they have higher rates of crime. And white perpetrators are undercharged, so of course they have lower rates of crime. And all those stupid stats that you keep using are operating off a small sample size. So shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up." The video garnered over two million views. ''Wired'' magazine named it one of the best TikTok videos of 2020, with Emma Grey Ellis writing, "TikTokkers duetted it, made horn remixes of it, pole danced to it. It's TikTok at its best and most dystopian at the same time, and it lives in my head rent-free." In a video titled "Why is Rosa Parks the only black activist we learn about?", she discussed the

Montgomery bus boycott The Montgomery bus boycott was a political and social boycott, protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a foundational event in the civil rights movement in the United ...

. In 2020, Chambers discussed her practice of body neutrality on TikTok, and she has been part of the

body neutrality The concept of body neutrality encourages the mindset that a person's bodily appearance, and attitudes towards it, should have the least possible effect on their experience of life. Its proponents assert that people should neither be celebrated for ...

movement for years.

''Beer Beer, Truck Truck''

In 2020, Chambers made a video satirizing

country music Country (also called country and western) is a popular music, music genre originating in the southern regions of the United States, both the American South and American southwest, the Southwest. First produced in the 1920s, country music is p ...

, summarizing the style of country music produced by men as "Beer, beer, truck, truck, girls in tight jeans, beer, truck, beer, truck, America, America". She contrasted this with her view of the style of country music produced by women, summarized as, "He cheated on me, so I burned down his house and destroyed everything he loved—and then I killed him". The video currently has over 1.8 million likes. George Birge, a country musician who was considering ending his singing career at the time, then made a legitimate song out of the chorus entitled " Beer Beer, Truck Truck", which he posted to TikTok and subsequently released in 2021. As a result of the song, George Birge was signed to a recording contract in Nashville. The song was released June 18, 2021 as his first single. Chambers was listed as a co-author of the credits of the song, causing her to be inducted into the

American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) () is an American not-for-profit performance-rights organization (PRO) that collectively licenses the public performance rights of its members' musical works to venues, broadc ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chambers, Erynn 1992 births Living people 21st-century African-American women 21st-century American women educators 21st-century American educators 21st-century African-American educators African-American activists African-American songwriters American TikTokers American social media influencers Women social media influencers Songwriters from North Carolina