William Papa Bio

William Papa had joined Instagram when he was in the sixth grade, which he tried to hide from his mother, and often explored Vine from his sister’s account. He had actually joined musical.ly long before it had become TikTok, but he is not very proud of that phase and prefers to keep this info “confidential”. He had a very busy schedule participating in sports and various extracurricular activities in school when the COVID-19 pandemic caused lockdowns in March 2020. Suddenly, he had unlimited free time in hand and decided to create a TikTok profile out of boredom while at a friend’s house one night. On a whim, and to satisfy his ADHD for an hour, he decided to make a video with a modern take on how the seven deadly sins would dress if they were actually people, an idea that he got from watching the Japanese anime series Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.

He was pleasantly surprised when the video went viral on the platform, earning him about 100k views within 24 hours. He received several requests for a second part to the video, which he made the very next day. William, who was not a dancer or actor, and did not consider himself funny enough due to being socially awkward, decided to join the POV community on TikTok as he did have a unique point-of-view as a 6’5” tall person. Together with another TikToker and close friend Birlap a.k.a. Arny, he often stayed up late at night writing down video ideas on a note pad. One such video, from a series he made on the trend of locking eyes with a kid in school and imagining what type of mythological creature the kid was, became the first of his videos to hit 1 million views. It helped his profile grow rapidly by about a thousand fans each day and took him to 1.1 million followers by the end of the year. By that time, he had already made about $18,500 in revenue through monetization and audio promotions on the platform.

William Papa was bullied in elementary school for being the tallest kid in his class and continued to suffer from anxiety, which grew worse especially when he was in middle school and early high school. When the pandemic caused schools to shutdown, he was actually happy not to face other kids at school. He started to care less about these things after joining TikTok and told local news outlet The Business Report in January 2021 that for him, “the best way to fight social anxiety” and “get out of that little box that you’re in” was to talk to people online. He was even able to not let random negative comments on social media get to him. After successfully overcoming his own social anxiety and mental health issues, he decided to help others do the same by creating a discord server where anyone could join to gain friends and participate in therapy chats with moderators. He further told the outlet that people needed to stop trying to gain respect from bullies, and further added, “You need respect from your family, your peers, your friends, the ones you actually trust, and most importantly, respect for yourself”.

William Samuel Papa was born on September 9, 2002 in Gainesville, Florida, United States. He has an older sister named Sophie who has appeared in his social media posts. He attended Buchholz High School from where he completed his graduation in 2021. An athletic person, he had a busy schedule in school as he did track practice and then drove two hours to Jacksonville for soccer practice before getting back home around midnight to do homework. He previously played soccer with Clay County Soccer Club in Florida and joined the Northern Irish football club Crumlin United in August 2021. He has an odd phobia of walking down a long hallway.