Aunt Amanda Offers Familial-Style Support and Advice on TikTok

When you're trying to cultivate a social media following, personal branding is very important: people need to know exactly what they're coming to your page for. Specificity is key and the more you can work with that specific thing that makes you and your work personal, the more you're probably going to find success. Or you could just get lucky due to the algorithm, or a combination or both. When it comes to Aunt Amanda on TikTok though, it's probably the former.

Growing up, many of us had that "cool aunt." You know the one: she's the person you could talk with about personal problems and issues without judgment, maybe even things you didn't feel comfortable telling your own parents because you didn't want the wrath of Holy God to smite you because, in the words of one of America's finest poets, William Smith, "Parents just don't understand."

Well Aunt Amanda certainly seems like she does. So who is this wonderful woman who's constantly posting positive content geared toward uplifting people with helpful advice, loving yourself, and, of course, delicious looking, home-cooked meals. Seriously, whatever she's eating here below is something I certainly want to scarf down right here and now.

In a SI Live article, the Staten Island native says she "kinda got famous on accident." As to why she ultimately decided to start a TikTok account, she said, "I honestly joined TikTok I was at a point in my life with my son when he had a lot of medical health issues and I was just looking for a vice just for a moment to take my mind off things."

"When I came across TikTok and saw all these funny videos, I thought to myself, ‘I can do this.' I'm funny and I can eat, ya know? So I just started doing it. It became an outlet for me to channel my pain into humor," she said in her interview.

One of her more popular videos early on was met with some haterade online, because it showed Amanda feeding her son a bottle at 15 months old.

For Amanda, however, it didn't really bother her all too much, "I didn’t feed too much into the negativity. Instead, I focused on making fun videos and once I started doing the eating videos, that’s when I started taking it really seriously."

If you ever need a pick-me-up, you could certainly check out the 32-year-old Graniteville mom's more recent videos, but she's mostly known for helping to broaden people's food horizons. She remarked that she was surprised by how many people weren't cognizant of Tajin, and just how much it's upped their food game.

Even though she mostly sticks to a low-carb diet for all of her foods, Amanda doesn't really promote it to other people on TikTok because she's an advocate for body positivity and "whatever works for" her followers: "I would never promote a diet; I promote choosing a lifestyle that fits you," she said. “I know what works for me because I’ve gotten bloodwork done and discussed it with medical professionals. But I want my followers to stick with what works for them."

If you're a fan of Aunt Amanda, you can follow her on the TikTok app here.