An Irish teen has become a TikTok sensation after he decided to start reading to his followers live on the social media platform every night.
Shane Donohue, who goes by irishfella.exe on TikTok, said he started the video’s as a joke because he thought it would be funny for someone with dyslexia and a lisp to read to their followers.
The 18-year-old soon amassed a huge following of two million, as people said the videos helped to send them to sleep and take their minds off worries in their lives.
Shane told the Irish Mirror he has been doing social media for years but lost his motivation for content creating when his account got banned last year. However, when Covid hit, Shane discovered a new interest in creating content.
He said: “I had a TikTok account last year, but it got banned, so I was really unmotivated. But during the lockdown, I decided I’d start up again, and I saw someone reading on TikTok, and I thought I’d be funny, you know, someone with dyslexia and a lisp to read bedtime stories.”
He added: “I’m not going to lie to you, I’m not some angel who went on TikTok to try help people sleep because it really wasn’t the case.
“I really just did this as a joke, but a lot of people benefitted off of it, so I just kept it going.”
After posting the first video, the Clare teen said he received direct messages from people saying they found it helped them relax and fall asleep.
He said: “I started getting these DM’s saying the streams are helping me sleep and basically just pretty good things about it.
“I’m not going to lie, at first when people were DMing me that, I’ll be honest, I kind of thought they were lying because… I didn’t really look at it like that, if I’m going to be honest.
“But then I started getting more of these DMs and even comments, so then I kind of knew there were people actually benefitting from these streams.”
He added: “I was getting DMs, you know, ‘I was just having a really down day, and when I saw your stream it kind of took my mind off it’ that kind of thing, and I got some pretty disturbing DMs too that I probably wouldn’t mention, but I remember there was one specifically that kind of did really change my mind on it.”
After receiving the countless messages, Shane decided to alter his content to help people struggling with their mental health and sleep.
Shane said he found it difficult to keep making the videos as school became more challenging, but when another lockdown hit, he decided to give TikTok his all.
“When the lockdown hit, I was like, do you know what, for a week I’m just gonna… focus on that for a week… and I gained 100k,” he said.
After having such success in just one week, Shane decided to focus on the social media platform for the three months of summer and managed to reach one million followers.
The star said reading to his followers has helped him with his dyslexia.
He said: “I’m not going to lie like my first the first stream I did, it was awful. I was like stuttering, and I was really bad, but I started doing it a lot, and I just realised the more I was doing it, I was getting a lot better.”
