- Singer Sophia James started a TikTok trend called Group 7 as a social media experiment
- James posted seven consecutive TikTok videos to test audience reach and engagement
- Viewers identify their group by the first video they watched, labelled from Group 1 to 7
A new viral trend has taken over TikTok this week, and it started when singer Sophia James described it as "a little science experiment." This trend, being called "Group 7," is prompting users to check which random "group" they belong to. The viral success can be attributed to James' creative and unintentional social media experiment.
On Friday, October 17, James posted seven consecutive TikTok videos, each featuring her own music. Her objective was to understand which video reaches the largest audience and which gets the most engagement. This simple effort quickly turned into a social media phenomenon, where people began identifying themselves based on the group number of the video they watched first.
Her first TikTok was on a parking ticket, followed by a second video titled "Post No. 2". She said that it had always been her versus the algorithm, and that on this occasion, she had decided she was winning.
By the fourth post, James began labelling videos by group number, writing, that if viewers were seeing the video, they were in Group 4. She also explained that she was testing which video would reach the most viewers. After six posts, her seventh video inadvertently went viral, which the internet now knows as "Group 7."
Changing groups isn't possible and has no real meaning, yet "Group 7" is a reminder of how quickly TikTok can turn a simple experiment into a viral cultural phenomenon.
