TikTok stars ‘sleep-stream’ their way to fame and fortune

“I woke up the next morning and ended the live and went over to my mom and was like, ‘Mom, I literally just made money falling asleep,’” said Hector, who has more than 347,000 followers on the app.

Through TikTok’s live feature, viewers can donate digital “coins” that can be cashed out for money. On Hector’s first sleep-stream, he said, he received about $10 worth of coins — not riches, exactly, but more than he’d usually be paid to go to sleep ($0). What most users hope to gain from these sleep-streams are followers. “Overnight my video blew up, and I got over 6,000 new followers,” said Oscar Reyes, 18. “After I stopped the stream I lost followers, so I don’t know if people were just following for the stream, but I grew substantially. I went from 12,000 to 18,600 followers.”

Jasmine Stephens, 16, said that for days, her “for you” feed on TikTok has been full of videos promoting sleep livestreams. “I scrolled and scrolled and saw more and more,” Stephens said. “I was like, OK this is a thing now. I saw videos with over 1 mn likes.” Though it is newly a trend on TikTok, sleeping on camera isn’t exactly a new concept. In 2015, many teenagers began casting their sleep on the platform YouNow, using the hashtag #sleepingsquad.

Twitch, which primarily hosts gaming livestreams, bans on-camera sleeping, since it counts as leaving a feed “unattended.” But plenty of people do it anyway. In January 2019, one Twitch streamer inadvertently passed out and woke up to 200 new followers. The clip, with more than 3.6 mn views, has since become the most-watched Twitch video ever.

On Feb 9, 18.5 mn viewers tuned in to watch one man sleep on Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese counterpart. Before they go live, TikTok sleep-streamers usually create a promotional video that they post to their feeds, advertising the sleep-stream happening that night. When bedtime approaches, they prop up their phones on their night stands, crawl under the covers and hit the live button. Hector said, “I thought it was the weirdest but also the coolest thing.”

For users who watch sleep-streams, the appeal isn’t necessarily the person streaming but the pop-up community that forms in the stream’s chat section. Livestreams on TikTok aren’t archived, so sleep-streams, many of which are simply a dark blank screen, provide a time and place for users to meet. The streams can have a pleasant, sedative effect. Some sleep-streamers play soft music, or perform a soothing bedtime routine for their viewers. The experience can be relaxing for the host too. “People were watching over me so nothing could happen to me,” Reyes said. “I slept like a baby.”