Some of the accounts started last year as a joke among friends. An anthropomorphized Mount Hood was warring with Mount Rainier on TikTok, with the creators behind them exchanging jabs in the comments sections? Why not.
But in February, when cuts to the National Park Service spurred concern by some over the future of public lands in the United States, the creators of numerous unofficial accounts for national parks and forests shifted their focus to creating awareness of the famous places that they had adopted.
And now, many of those accounts have stumbled upon a new approach to attract followers: adding some sex appeal.
This week, an account with the display name Yellowstone National Park, and the handle Visit.Yellowstone, posted a video that started with the popular TikTok creator Thoren Bradley taking off his shirt before cutting to a clip of a panorama of mountains and water in Yellowstone.
The video, with a caption extolling the virtues of Yellowstone’s 2.2 million acres, has generated more than seven million views. It also has hundreds of comments cheering on what some people clearly took as surprising content from what they assumed was a national park’s official TikTok page. The account’s popularity exploded, reaching one million followers.
And with that growth, a trend was born, as several other accounts dedicated to national parks — none of which have any official connection with the parks — followed suit with sexy videos of their own.
“It was extremely, just unhinged,” said Ashley Nichols, a content creator whose reaction video supporting Yellowstone’s move into provocative content has more than 12 million views.
“This is a nonserious thing that has a serious undertone,” Ms. Nichols said, adding later, “I think it’s wonderful, by any means necessary, to bring awareness.”
Representatives for the National Park Service did not respond to a request for comment on the fake accounts, but the organization seemed to acknowledge the trend this week with a post of Death Valley photos on its official Instagram account. The caption called the park the “original thirst trap.”
That official post could be mistaken for plenty of the fake ones, which have been mixing humor and advocacy all along.
“We have a responsibility because people are looking at us for advice and what to do,” said Jaime Wash, a 43-year-old in Portland, Ore., who runs fake accounts for Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens.
As her accounts have grown, Ms. Wash has posted about the environmental effects of logging as well as information about how people can be advocates for national parks. She acknowledged, however, that the more provocative posts are popular for a reason.
People “don’t want to hear somebody preach every day,” Ms. Wash said. “But if somebody is silly and fun and gives them joy, then says something, they tend to listen more.”
Kim Tanner, the creator of a Joshua Tree National Park account, said the goal of her account was to create awareness about the value of preserving open land and to draw attention to the park’s natural beauty. But those posts weren’t getting much traction, she said. The ones with sexier content changed that.
“I’m not super thrilled about sexualizing Joshua Tree,” she said of the posts, some of which contain swear words and sexual references. “But it’s working, and because it’s working, I’m going to keep doing it.”
Her Joshua Tree account now has more than 235,000 followers.
The Yellowstone, Joshua Tree and Mount Hood accounts are among dozens of unofficial national park accounts that have cropped up in recent months. As with all social media trends, the bit could eventually grow old, but something unexpected has happened along the way: Many of the creators have become friends.
In addition to commenting on one another’s posts, many of the people behind the fake accounts also communicate in TikTok group chats and text messages, bonding over their love of parks and their shared goals.
“I’m close with the Yellowstone account and I have been since the beginning,” Ms. Wash said. “And also the Willamette River. I really like her. She’s a lot of fun. And Joshua Tree. These are all people that I do talk to on a daily basis.”
Nicole Stock is a Times editor reporting on personal health.
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