How much do you love bingo?
Enough to play once a month? Once a week? Whenever you can?
Here’s a slightly different question for you; do you love bingo enough to watch other people playing it when you’re not playing yourself?
Because believe it or not there is a rather large appetite on the social media site, TikTok, for people who do just that.
You read that right, loads of people on TikTok enjoy watching some of the most hardcore players out there dabbing their bingo cards at their local bingo hall.
These TikTokers – we think that’s what TikTok people are called – have millions of views and followers, and they happily chat to them in the comments section and answer their questions, while some even occasionally live stream.
What is this all about then? Let us tell you.
What is TikTok?
TikTok is a social media company that focusses on short punchy videos rather than text based communication.
People often mime to soundbites from films or songs, perform short sketches, or create 8 second videos with a catchphrase like “When your husband leaves his socks on the floor…again”, that is displayed over a shot of a woman picking up the sock and then gleefully revealing a pair of scissors and cutting the sock in half.
Whatever the videos are they usually have a light hearted or humorous vibe to them, it’s not the place to go for political stuff.
It’s a Chinese social media company so it has a very different feel to the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube, even though these all support short videos too.
It allows users to edit the videos in fun ways, and overlay graphics or synch them with music tracks.
Our bingo TikTokers though, tend to go for simpler slightly longer form videos of the most exciting few minutes of their bingo session, such as nearly winning or actually winning.
You can search for people who are interested in the same things as you using hashtags, so for bingo players a few popular ones are #bingo #bingoobsessed and #bingoislife.
Top 3 Bingo Players on TikTok
Sadly for us Brits, it’s the Americans who are ruling the TikTok bingo landscape, but who knows, maybe this article will inspire one of you to lead the charge and create your own TikTok bingo account?
No pressure or anything though!
Here are the top 3 TikTokers we have found on the site, with a little bit about each of them, but there are many many more out there doing exactly the same thing.
KeeKee
- TikTok alias: bingojunkiess
- Followers: 2.3 million
- Likes: 66.9 million
This larger than life bingo fan is known for sharing her finest dabbing moments with her 2.3 million followers every few days.
She is also well known for playing the pull tab cards that don’t really exist over here, but are sort of similar to scratch cards. She opens them very quickly and very rhythmically almost creating a beat, and let us tell you, it is strangely mesmerising!
Her fans like her little catchphrases too, which she tends to use rather than talking to the camera, so viewers get get more immersed in the game she is playing than in a conversation with her.
Elishia_Lockwood
- TikTok alias: bingodabqueen
- Followers: 509.5k
- Likes: 13.3 million
Elishia is a pretty sassy player who is vocal about rudeness in the bingo halls she visits – it’s one of her pet peeves and understandably so.
Her style is to let her audience into her world by including them rather than sticking to close up shots of tickets or looking directly at the camera. She is often playing with a friend or group of friends, regularly talks to other people at the venue, and includes her viewers by holding tickets up to the camera or picking it up to give a slightly different view.
She doesn’t just post bingo play videos, although that is the bulk of her material, but she also posts life updates occasionally and unpackaging videos, for example of her new personalised bingo daubers, so even her none play related content is sometimes bingo themed.
Melva Powell
- TikTok alias: bingo_fairy
- Followers: 448.2k
- Likes: 7.7 million
Melva is characterised by her short hair that she sometimes dyes in different colours, and tends to film her videos from static camera angles.
She is well known for her live streams and what she is great at is really sharing her excitement with her viewers. She doesn’t go crazy, but quietly builds tension and makes you feel like you are her friend in the room with her.
So great is her love for bingo, and her viewers apparently, that she even goes on a free bingo app and plays bingo with the people that watch her on TikTok, so she has built a great little community that she genuinely engages with.
Jholmesbingoboy
- TikTok alias: jholmes_bingoboy
- Followers: 235.1K
- Likes: 2.9 million
It’s nice to get a guy on the list, even if it does make it a list of 4 rather than a list of 3.
He seems like a lovely lad, although he doesn’t look like your average bingo player dressed in colourful t-shirts and sporting a baseball cap on backwards plus a big neck chain and braces. Oh and he sometimes uses the dabber on his own hands and arms too – quite the individual!
He certainly loves playing though, and only really posts his wins, so it’s a great account to follow if you only want the exciting moments and perhaps a bit of inspiration too.
Just be aware that his delivery style is a little more street than the ladies above, and occasionally contains the odd swear word too. Naughty boy.
Viral TikTok Bingo Trend
One thing that might mistakenly have fallen into this article is the TikTok trend that went viral in 2022 but has continued as the years roll on.
It was called #2022Bingo originally but obviously, that name only works for the year in question, so we will call it the life bingo card from now on.
What people would do, is fill an American 75 ball bingo card with achievements or life events instead of numbers, then cross them off as and when they happened.
It’s a fun way of gamifying your goals or ambitions for the year, or to predict what might happen along the way, or just to give yourself something to hang on the fridge and come back to every now and again.
You can put anything on the card, it doesn’t have to be big stuff.
We saw things as varied as:
- Got a new job
- Met new friends
- Bought something useless
- Cried
- Ireland will join NATO
- Read a book in a day
- Go to a farm
- New Beyonce album
- Dwayne Johnson enters politics
See? It can be absolutely anything.
The whole point is that you use it for your own purposes and are totally free to add whatever you want to it, whether that be achievements to spur you on or future predictions to test your psychic abilities.
You don’t have to share your bingo card on TikTok of course, but it’s a neat little idea that’s worth knowing about in case you want to do it yourself.