Elyse Myers: 13 Facts About The TikTok Comedian

It's not hyperbole to describe Elyse Myers' rise as nothing short of meteoric. Back in 2021, Myers was hardly a celebrity: living in Nebraska with her husband, Jonas, and their young son, August, Myers worked a regular job while posting videos on social media — mainly for her own benefit — until one of those videos went viral, pretty much instantly. Within hours, that video had racked up thousands of views, then millions.

Fast forward to the present, where Myers is now a beloved comedy star with a serious social media following that includes 6.8 million on TikTok and another 3.2 million on Instagram. It's not uncommon for one of her videos to be seen by millions of eyeballs, providing her with a giant platform allowing her to reach more people than she ever could have possibly imagined. As she came to realize the power she wielded with that platform, Myers made a conscious decision to use it to spread a message of positivity, inclusiveness, and acceptance, sharing her own struggles with anxiety, ADHD, depression, and other issues related to mental health. "I think that the most common response I see in the comments that starts a conversation between strangers is, oh, my gosh, I thought I was the only one," Myers told NPR. 

As her popularity continues to grow and her reach keeps expanding, read on to learn more about Elyse Myers and discover 13 facts about the TikTok comedian.

Elyse Myers' life completely changed on October 6, 2021. That fateful day, she posted a video on TikTok, as she'd done many times before, to share a vignette from her past. In this one, she hilariously recounted the worst date she'd been on in her life. A dude she'd never met invited her out to dinner, which wound up becoming a bizarre trip to a Taco Bell drive-through where he ordered 100 hard-shell tacos — and then feigned forgetting his wallet, leaving Myers to pay. She then went to her date's home, finally fleeing with as many tacos as she could carry — because, hey, she paid for them. "The hoops I am teleporting through to convince myself that this decision I have made is okay is just wild," she said.

That video went viral, racking up more than 12 million views — even earning a story in People magazine. Those millions who watched the video had questions, which she attempted to answer in a follow-up TikTok video. Among the highlights: she had no recollection of the guy's name, but confirmed he did indeed order 100 tacos (for which she paid $149.07).

"I remember thinking, 'No one's going to watch this.' Within the first hour, it just blew up," Myers told People. "I got really scared, and then it was cool. It was cool that people connected and thought it was so funny."

For Elyse Myers, sharing funny stories via TikTok was a creative respite from her day job as a web developer. In fact, since 2018 she'd been plying her trade with her own firm, Myers Web Development. The notion of TikTok becoming her full-time job, she admitted in an interview with People, had never occurred to her. "Since I was still working as a web developer, it wasn't something I was pouring into for money," she said of posting videos on the social media platform. "It was just fun. As the account started growing really steadily, I started realizing, 'This could be something down the road.'"

That "down the road" occurred far more quickly than she'd ever anticipated, thanks to the overnight success of her taco video. "It happened so fast!" she marveled, revealing that the whole thing exploded within an hour of posting the video. "I did not expect all those eyeballs on my account." 

While Myers' web-developing days are apparently behind her, some traces of her previous gig remain in cyberspace. For example, a 2018 blog post she wrote, sharing tips and tricks for aspiring web developers, can still be seen online. In that post, she shared the pros and cons of her job, but did highlight some perks. "As a web developer, you will have the opportunity to take high-paying jobs and work for companies that have more money than you can even imagine," she wrote.

Elyse Myers has built up her massive fanbase via her somewhat unique combination of comedy and self-help, addressing issues related to mental health and self-esteem while also embracing the humor that can accompany such otherwise serious topics.

When it comes to her own self-esteem, Myers tends to take a brutally honest approach in sharing her own insecurities, something that has endeared her to fans. That came through loud and clear in a 2021 TikTok video in which she recalled a conversation with a teacher when she was just 11 that was still messing with her head. "As a child, specifically a middle-schooler, I was a little bit round," she shared. She added, "Was I ashamed of that? No. Other people seemed to be." That came into play when a male substitute teacher overheard Myers telling some friends she'd like to become a cheerleader. "He felt the need to walk up to us and cut me off and say, 'I need to save you from yourself,'" she recalled, noting that he recommended other activities she could embrace — presumably because of her appearance. 

That moment, and the embarrassment and humiliation she felt, has been something she's struggled to put behind her, with little success. "I met that man for one hour, when I was like 11, and I am 28, still undoing the damage that one sentence had on my life," she said.

Buoyed by the overnight success of her bad-date taco video, Elyse Myers continued to post more videos on TikTok, which continued to be gobbled up by the millions of followers who'd joined her. As her TikTok success continued to grow, she made the decision to branch out into other avenues of content. This led to the launch of her own podcast, "Funny Cuz It's True with Elyse Myers."

As her own public profile has ascended, so too has the level of guests she's welcomed to her podcast. In fact, it's a pretty star-studded list, including the likes of "Seinfeld" alum Julia Louis-Dreyfus, skateboard legend Tony Hawk, several cast members from "The Office," and various comedians (including Ron Funches, Maria Bamford, Tig Notaro, and others).

While she comfortably holds her own while chatting with these A-listers, entering the podcasting realm presented something of a learning curve when the web developer who became an overnight sensation by posting funny videos on social media needed to master the skills of a talk-show host. Speaking with Vanity Fair, Myers admitted that recording her first podcast was an anxiety-ridden experience. "I was so nervous," she said. "I was shaking. I couldn't type in my email correctly. And I was like, I have got to calm down. This is not helpful energy anymore. This is harmful energy. And so I had to really take a breath and go forward."

Having come to comedy in a very nontraditional manner, it shouldn't be surprising that the topics addressed by Elyse Myers are also far from typical. For Myers, it's all about maintaining a warts-and-all openness with fans, which includes sharing her own issues with anxiety, depression, and ADHD, all while trying to quell that internal voice in her head telling her she's not good enough — that if she attempts anything outside of her comfort zone, she's destined for failure. "I just don't understand why our brains actively try to fight against us in that way," told Vanity Fair.

In fact, it's that openness about herself that has led so many to connect with her, with Myers addressing the same issues many of her fans are dealing with. "I've had really high highs, and really low lows," she told People, explaining why she feels it's important to have these discussions in an open, honest, and often funny way. "It's important to me to make it a really normal thing," she added, "to be able to be at coffee with somebody and be like, 'Yeah and then I was super depressed for a while.' To have that not be awkward is really important to me."

In a particularly resonant TikTok video, she offered some surprisingly simple advice on coping with anxiety and fear. "Someone asked me how I manage my nerves, and I said, 'I don't. I don't. I just do things scared.'"

Once Elyse Myers became an overnight TikTok superstar, a rather large question loomed: Now that she had millions of followers and a massive platform, what would she do with it? For Myers, that's meant providing a judgment-free space for those who watch her videos and listen to her podcast. "I want them to feel like they are at home in their bodies, in their minds, and they have a place where they belong," she told People. 

As always, that content emerges from a deeply personal place, with Myers sharing her own experiences in hopes that what she's gone through will help others faced with similar challenges. Chief among these has been her ADHD, sharing tips and tricks she's developed over the years that have helped her cope. "I'm like, 'If it has helped me, I want it to help you.' I love sharing that kind of stuff," she added.

With that in mind, she's developed a set of guidelines as to whether the content she's putting out into the world will be useful to those who consume it. This led to a mantra of sorts to help determine whether she's serving her audience. "My one thing I really cling on to is I just want to add value to people's life, and I want them to feel known and seen," she told Vanity Fair. "Those are my three sentences I really run through."

Sticking to her core mission of putting her own flaws on display in order to help others has achieved more for Elyse Myers than just growing her social media following. As personal branding expert Chelsea Krost told Vanity Fair, Myers' unfiltered, anti-Kardashian style has also helped her to build a recognizable and relatable brand. 

"That whole element of relatability is totally where Elyse comes in," Krost told the magazine, revealing that Myers, whether she planned it or not, is at the forefront of a larger trend impacting social media, moving away from idealized fakery to a more realistic depiction of life. "It makes people think, I see myself in this girl," Krost said, adding, "She's reinforcing that it's okay to feel comfortable in my body no matter what size or shape I am."

Of course, Myers is also happy to take her fans' money in exchange for branded merchandise, and she has quite an array available via her website. That merch consists of T-shirts and sweatshirts, which, not surprisingly, are right on brand. Among the slogans adorning her shirts as "Go find less," "Absolutely not," and "I don't receive that."

In addition to selling her own merch, Elyse Myers has also generated income by entering into some paid partnerships with various brands. These paid promotional posts, however, haven't hampered her own brand, such as one video in which she visits a California farm that supplies produce for a supermarket chain. 

Not only does Myers not try to disguise the fact that these particular offerings are paid promos, she proudly listed the brands with which she's collaborated on her website, a list that includes such companies as Dunkin', the Hulu streaming service, Quaker Oats, and more. A brief Forbes bio highlights a few more, including Aerie, Audible, Hyundai, and Cheez-Its.

In fact, Myers is apparently quite picky about the companies she chooses to do business with. As she told Vanity Fair, she passes on 99% of the deals that are pitched to her, only taking on those that she feels will enhance her personal brand, not diminish it.

It's no secret that Elyse Myers has attracted huge numbers to her social media, and among those millions are plenty of celebrities. These include Leslie Jones, with Myers sharing her awe at having spent the previous evening hanging out with the "Saturday Night Live" alum in a video. "I told her I liked this hat and she gave it to me!" said Myers as she tried on a baseball cap, concluding by singing, "What is happening?"

Another celebrity fan is Reese Witherspoon, who created a video "duet" using Myers' cooking demonstration to whip up a batch of "Reese's toast" — replicating a Reese's peanut butter cup with burned toast, chunky peanut butter, and chocolate chips — and posting it on her own TikTok account. Myers responded by reposting that duet, and including her OMG-no-way response to it.

"It's so wild," Myers told People of having these interactions with A-list celebrities. According to Myers, teaming up with celebs for videos happens so quickly that she doesn't have time to become intimidated. "It goes from us never even talking to her messaging me and being like, 'Yeah, we're best friends now,'" she said, then clarifying, "We're not really best friends, but it's super authentic and easy to interact with these celebrities."

As fans of Elyse Myers have surely ascertained, comedy and web developing are not her sole skills. She's also a talented singer, and recorded several original songs that are available to stream on Spotify. As she told People in 2022, at that time she was in the midst of writing original songs for a forthcoming album. "I'm always writing music — that's just the way I process life," she said, pointing out that the music available to stream was recorded back when she was in college and had never initially been intended for a mass audience. "It was for my immediate family, which is why it's online, but people have been loving it and really connecting with it," she said. 

Her new music, she suggested, would carry the same messages as her video and podcast content, just in another medium. "I'm trying to create music that does that same thing as my videos, but just on an audio platform," she explained. 

Admitting she's no recording artist, she was hopeful of finding somebody who could help produce her musical efforts, which to that point had been produced while she sang in a closet using a low-fi microphone. "I hope to connect with somebody that actually knows what they're doing," she added. That apparently happened later that year, when she joined Meghan Trainor for an a cappella version of her hit "Made You Look."

As fans of Elyse Myers are well aware, she's also a mom. In February 2023, she revealed that she and husband Jonas were expecting their second child, who arrived in mid-September. 

Given Myers' rampant creativity and her knack for creating clever videos, the pregnancy announcement for her second was far from typical. In fact, she and her husband starred in a shot-for-shot recreation of the Dunder Mifflin commercial from "The Office," appearing in the aptly titled episode "The Local Ad," which she posted on Instagram. Beginning with a memo expelled from a printer, Myers herself provides the voiceover.

"It all starts with two people, but you can never tell where those people will end up," she says, as that memo is transported between various people (all played by the couple). "People fall in love, they change, they grow, and then sometimes they have babies," the voicever continues until, finally, that crumpled-up piece of paper is tossed into a wastebasket — only for Myers to un-crumple it, to reveal its words: "We are pregnant." In a subsequent Instagram post, she posted a photo of that crumpled note. "I actually can't wrap my head around the fact that we are going to be parents to two human beings," she wrote in the caption. The parody received a shoutout from the official Instagram account of "The Office," in addition to congratulatory comments from stars Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey.

One of Elyse Myers' most distinctive physical characteristics is her dark, curly hair. She found herself in the somewhat bizarre position of having to defend her hair after posting footage on TikTok of herself presenting at the Podcast Academy Excellence in Audio Awards. As Insider pointed out, she received numerous compliments — along with a few comments criticizing her locks. 

She responded in a follow-up post, commenting on the haters. "The amount of people that have made it their life's mission to let me know that they do not like my hair is so incredible," she said before offering a solution she joked would be a win-win for both her and her critics. "Next time you go into the hairdresser, don't give them a photo of me and my hair as inspiration for your next haircut — and then I think it'll work out great," she quipped.

As it turns out, her hair is a bit of a sore point for her. As she told People, she was regularly teased about her hair as a kid. "I just wanted to do everything I could to get rid of it," she said, revealing she used to straighten it until she became pregnant for the first time, and it mysteriously straightened on its own, and she discovered she missed her curls. "I didn't learn to love it when I had it," she said. "Now I don't have it, now I miss it.'" 

It's hardly a secret that Elyse Meyers has come a long way in a relatively brief period. As for the direction she sees herself taking in the future, she envisions herself branching out even further into other areas of the entertainment industry. That, she told Vanity Fair, includes writing for film and television — in fact, she revealed that she was already in the midst of developing a scripted television series. Beyond that, she's also pondering the notion of writing a movie, and is also keen to author a book. 

In fact, in the longer term, she has even larger ambitions for where she'd like to see herself, and has set the bar about as high as it gets; as she told People, she'd love to pattern her career on that of Oprah Winfrey — at least when it comes to the broad strokes. 

"I'm not trying to say I'm the next Oprah," she told the magazine. "But she is powerful. She has something to say, and people know what she's about. She is the world's friend, and that's the hope I have for my career."