“If you are watching this video, you are in Group 7,” the singer Sophia James said in a clip she posted to TikTok last week.
The 24-second video of Ms. James talking quickly spread across TikTok, piling up more than 15.5 million views and spawning thousands of stitches, memes, and reposts of people proudly declaring their Group 7 membership.
If your feed has suddenly been inundated with references to “Group 7” and you’ve been wondering why, here’s some background.
Who is Sophia James?
Sophia James is a 26-year-old indie musician who was a contestant on Season 18 of “American Idol.” After making it to that show’s top 11 before being voted out, she released an album called “Clockwork” in 2024. Her new single, “So Unfair,” is the soundtrack for a series of videos she recently posted.
What is going on here?
In an effort to get “So Unfair” to be heard by as many people on TikTok as possible, Ms. James created videos in seven different styles — Groups 1 through 7 — with each featuring the song. In some, she’s speaking directly to the camera, while in others she’s standing further away, mouthing the lyrics to the song. Each video is an attempt to game the TikTok algorithm.
In a phone interview, Ms. James said she had recently seen a video that said you needed to “bully” the algorithm to get your content to go viral.
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