Trend Reporter 'Noah Glenn Carter' Talks TikTok Ban, House Fire And Social Media History

Noah Glenn Carter is a trend and news reporter on TikTok known for his to-the-point and up-to-date explanations of trends. With over 8.8 million followers on the app, Carter has carved out a name for himself as one of the biggest trend reporters on the app, but his social media footprint goes back much farther, reaching all the way back to the days of Flipnote, Vine and Musical.ly.

We talked with Carter about his history of social media stardom, his recent viral house fire, the TikTok ban in the U.S. and more.

Q: It's great to talk with you, Noah. So when did you start posting content online?

A: So, originally when I first started was probably around 2009, 2010. There was an app called Flipnote on the DSi. I would post on there, I would get into the top 20 pretty consistently. My brother actually had the number one Flipnote in the world at one point, so that motivated me to make better animations. Moving from that, I went from Flipnote to Vine, and I was on Vine probably from a few months after it started all the way up until it closed down.

Then from Vine, I heard about this app called Musical.ly from a creator called RiceGum. I joined Musical.ly in January of 2016. But Ricegum used to make videos on Musical.ly and he would always like roast kids on there and stuff. I was just like, "Oh, that looks really easy. Let me try that. Let me download that app." So got Musical.ly, started seeing success on it. Six months into joining, I got my first featured badge. From there they just kept featuring my stuff. Whenever they would feature you, you would get like a million views. They kept featuring me. I think they got rid of it in like 2018, and that's when it turned into TikTok.

Q: What was your content on Flipnote like?

A: I had a Flipnote of Squidward singing. I forget what the YouTube channel was called, but they would make autotunes of certain things. It was like, Charlie Sheen saying "winning" and it was an autotune version of his winning thing. So, I made Squidward singing it and that was one of my big ones. I made Team Rocket singing a Yu-Gi-Oh parody. I had multiple parts to that. I think like four of the parts got into the top 20.

I had a bunch of random ones in the top 20, like Mario singing something. The best one I had though was number two. It was just a story about how one of my birds had died, 'cause I was really sad about it dying. It was a parakeet we had. I just wrote the story and I just like, sort of wanted to share it with my friends. But then it ended up getting the number two spot and I ended up deleting it 'cause it was just a story. I was like, "This doesn't deserve it," and a lot of other big creators on there were saying like, "Yo, you should delete this. It doesn't deserve to be number two." So, I kind of felt pressured to, but I deleted it. 'Cause it wasn't an animation, it was just like a story talking about what the bird meant to me.

But my brother had one where it was Dora lip-syncing to a Smash video. It was like, "Stop everybody. Put your hands in the air," or something. He posted that and then it got number one and then the biggest creator on Flipnote had beef with him 'cause he thought that it wasn't good enough to be number one and it took the number one spot from him. So, he would leave hate comments on my brother's videos for a few weeks. It was funny. It was a fun time. My brother actually ended up meeting someone who had seen his Flipnote when it was number one, like in real life. So, it was like the first time, I guess, ever seeing social media fame firsthand.

Q: What was your content and growth on Vine and Musical.ly like?

A:I would say it was stereotypical Vine stuff. I don't know how to necessarily explain it, but if you were on Vine, you know, the little six-second videos that are funny. It was comedy.

But then once Vine got shut down, I went all in with Musical.ly, 'cause I think there was some overlap. I think it wasn't fully shut down when I first got on Musical.ly. On Vine, I actually did have some success. I had one Vine that had two point something million views and that was my most viewed Vine ever. Then I had a few with a couple hundred thousand and many with 60,000 and 50,000. I had I think between 12,000 and 14,000 followers on there before it got shut down. That was my first taste, I guess, of a little, a tiny, tiny bit of social media fame. But after Vine, I went to Musical.ly.

I was known as the dancing lip-syncing person. So, at one event that I went to, I had two creators call down to me, I was on my balcony at this in real-life event for Musical.ly, they called for me, they're at the pool, I was on my balcony and they called for me saying, "Hey, are you the robot tutting dude?" 'Cause I used to do those kinds of videos. That got featured consistently. So, everybody knew me as the tutting guy. Then I also did lip-sync videos. So, some people knew me as the lip-syncing guy. That was kind of the kind of content I did on Musical.ly up until, I want to say up until 2020 almost, it was probably about 2019-2020 sometime when I stopped doing that content. I had 250,000 followers on there, but I know shortly after it turned into TikTok, I hit a million followers.

Q: What kind of impact did the switch from Musical.ly to TikTok have on your content?

A:Well, they started promoting different types of content. So, I would say it was less lip-syncing, more comedy stuff. I started doing story-times.

Q: Your old Musical.ly content made the rounds on TikTok late in 2023 as a bit of a meme. What's the story behind that?

A:So, there's this one video and it was my most popular video for forever because it got reposted to YouTube and the YouTube video got 20 million views or something. It was in a Musical.ly compilation on YouTube. It was so stupid. It was part of the don't judge me challenge. Somebody found it someday and just put text over it.

When they did that, the video got a million views really fast. Then other people started digging up my old videos, reposting them, turning them into memes. Then they found other videos and started turning those into memes. It just turned into endless memes. I'm not really quite sure why specifically those videos got chosen, but it was interesting 'cause I never tried to hide that I was on Musical.ly 'cause I'm proud of being an early adopter of TikTok, but it's embarrassing though. It is embarrassing. I realized if I don't embrace it, people are going to use it anyway.

Q: So when did you get into trend reporting on TikTok?

A: The earliest news type of thing I can remember doing was back in 2020. I want to say 2021 when Bella Poarch joined [OF]. I did have news videos before that, that's just the earliest that I remember. I think it was August of 2021. That video did really well. So I was like, "Why don't I start making more videos like this?" Then I kind of took that and evolved it. Then I sort of realized, "Oh, well, people don't just care about the news, they care about what's happening on TikTok too. So, why don't I start talking about situations on TikTok?"

I started talking about different situations that happened on TikTok and then it started growing and growing. That's kind of when everything started exploding. 'Cause apparently there were a lot of people that cared a lot about all that stuff.

Q: Why do you think that type of content caught on so well with TikTokers?

A: I think it's because a lot of these things you couldn't Google. TikTok drama doesn't show up on Google. So, I think that's why it's kind of important. Because if you don't really talk about it, people aren't going to report on it on the news. It's more recent that people have started to report it on the news because it got so popular on TikTok, but before, people were talking about it on TikTok, no news companies were reporting it. You couldn't Google it. Now, I think it's a little different, it's more open because they see, oh, there's a huge audience, let us get our piece of that pie.

Q: Do you know what your most popular video is since starting news reporting content?

A: It's either my most viewed or most liked, I don't remember which it is, but it's about Kendrick Johnson. When I made that video, there were two things that happened. One was, at that same school, someone had been bullied for having an LGBTQ flag. They had it taken away from them. Then I saw someone in the comment said, "That's the school that Kendrick Johnson happened at." I was like, "Wait, what? I looked it up and it was true. I made a video on that and I don't think anybody really knew. So, when I made that video everybody was like, "Oh, my gosh." It spread like wildfire.

Q: What's the wildest trend you've seen on TikTok since you started reporting trends?

A: Oh, devious licks. Do you know that trend? Yeah. I'd say that's probably the craziest. It was crazy what people were taking. I saw someone took an entire bathroom stall. I was like, how is that even possible? But people found a way.

Q: There are a lot of trends that definitely aren't allowed on TikTok that get by somehow. Why do you think that is?

A: So, quite honestly, the TikTok moderators are terrible at their jobs. I know firsthand they're very terrible at their jobs. So, I think there's that. ALSO, when TikTok releases new features, 'cause the December 22nd incident happened from [the addition of] slideshows.

When they release new features, I think they don't really put enough safety measures in to catch stuff. They don't think about certain things. When people figure it out, then it turns into a huge, just huge situation until they fix it. But even now, I still occasionally get December 22nd-type things on my For You Page. So, they still haven't really fully fixed that problem.

Q: Back in November 2023 your family home burned down in a house fire. Can you tell us about that?

A: I was sleeping. I hear screaming outside my window and everything and I hear the fire alarm going off. I didn't really think anything of it because the fire alarm would occasionally go off 'cause we had a fireplace that sometimes got smoky. Ever since I was little, it would occasionally go off. So, I wasn't really thinking.

But I know when I woke up, it smelled really weird. It didn't smell like normal smoke. I don't even know how to describe it. I've smelled it once since the fire and I got PTSD. But it was a weird smell. I wake up, my dad is yelling outside and I don't know what's going on. I'm basically being told there's a fire.

I'm just thinking, I'm like, "No, there's not. There's not a fire." Because you don't ever think your house is gonna burn down. So, I'm just thinking, I'm like, "There's not a fire." Then I get up to go downstairs. When I look downstairs, that's when it hit me because all I see is just black smoke coming up the stairs to my room. I was like, "Oh my God, I'm gonna die." [laughter] My dad throws a rock through my window and I hear the glass shatter. I'm trying to get out of my house. My brother-in-law, he's a firefighter and he was an hour and a half away from the house.

@noahglenncarter My house burned to the ground today. #fire #house ♬ Tell Me Why I'm Waiting – Timmies/Shiloh

@noahglenncarter This doesnt feel real. #house #fire ♬ Very Sad – Enchan

So, he was speeding towards it and calling me nonstop. I tried to call him back and he didn't answer. So, I set my phone down. I didn't realize it, but when I set it down I was on voicemail with him. So, there's a voicemail and you can hear the panic in my voice. I'm screaming to my dad to get a ladder. "We need to get out, help me." I had my dogs with me and everything and I'm just screaming. One of my friends was in the house. So, I'm screaming, trying to get out and I just have no idea where the fire is or what's going on.

It doesn't really hit me until I get outside. When I get outside, I go and look and all I see is on the other side of the house, there's just a raging fire in the roof. That's when it hit me. I was like, "Oh my God." 'Cause even getting out of the house and everything, I didn't realize what was happening, especially being woken up to that. I was just in shorts, I had no shoes, no shirt. For a while, I was just standing outside. It was freezing cold outside. It was November 27th, so it was freezing outside and I was just watching the house and then eventually someone gave me a shirt, gave me shoes and everything. But all my shoes were in the house. All my clothes were in the house, almost all my stuff.

The only thing I got was what I could fit in a backpack. I quickly grabbed stuff. I still forgot so much. I constantly think every day. I'm like, "Oh, I should have grabbed this. I should have grabbed this." That was bad but what was worse was when I posted it online, [there were] so many conspiracy theories, all this stuff. People were saying, "Oh, Noah burned down his house for views. Noah did it for insurance fraud," when in reality, I ended up losing in total about $90,000 from the fire after the insurance paid me my portion. So I didn't make anything from this. I'm actually at a major loss from it and I still had to pay tax on it.

Maybe I should have gotten an accountant, but I couldn't deduct all the stuff that was burned off of my taxes. It was crazy. I had all these people online spreading so much hate, saying all this stuff, saying like, "Oh, you did it for views." I still, even to this day, have people tell me that I burned down my house. It's just sad. I literally would do anything to have that house back, anything at all. I don't think people realize how bad it is to lose a house. That's what I kind of say to myself. It makes more sense 'cause the people that are commenting, if they lost their house, they wouldn't be commenting that [stuff].

Q: Why do you think people had that kind of reaction?

A: I think a lot of people think it's almost like a skit. When they see someone online, something bad happen, it's like, "Oh, this isn't real. This is reality TV or something." But I'm in a hotel room because of it, I don't have a house right now. I'm living hotel to hotel. So, even though it happened in November, it's still affecting me how many months later? However many months it's been. So, it is just terrible. People online made it a little worse. I know the week after that was probably the worst week of my life. I was just depressed all the time. It's not fun. It is not fun losing your childhood home.

Q: How are things now, five months later?

A: I'm doing a lot better now. I kind of can joke about it. I don't care as much and I go over to where the house was and now it's just been completely leveled. There's no more house. There's no more ruins of the house. It's just completely flat. It is kind of nice because the land around it is still the same, but without the house, it just feels empty. My parents are building a new house kind of adjacent to where the old house was.

Q: Were you expecting so much drama to come from sharing a story about your house burning down?

A: No. But there were a lot of nice people luckily, but you don't really remember the people that were nice to you. You remember the people that were kicking you. I would open TikTok and I wouldn't even search for hate videos or anything. TikTok would put it at the top of my For You Page. I couldn't even escape it 'cause everybody kept telling me, "Stop looking at them, stop looking." I'm like, "Y'all don't realize I'm opening TikTok and it's right there. It's the top thing, the first thing I see on my For You Page." It was just really hard. It was really sad.

Q: Do they know what caused the fire?

A: So, it was never officially ruled. I think the insurance company did a terrible job investigating it. The day after the fire, a ton of people came in to help us move anything that wasn't burned out of the house. But the day of the fire, the fire department had already been all over the house. I think there was like three different fire departments. Every single truck was at our house because the fire was so big. They had to bring in water because there wasn't a fire hydrant [near the house], so they had to bring in water and they had to bring in 80 trucks full of water for that, to put out the fire.

After that, they had to take a bulldozer and bulldoze the rest of the fire 'cause it wasn't going out. So, we didn't get an exact reason. I have a theory 'cause I know before I went to bed there was a fire in the fireplace. The day after the fire, I think it was, the people who owned the house before us actually came up to the house. They said, what happens a lot of times is flames will lick out of the top of the fireplace. We think that maybe the flames leaked out and got to the roof. But again, there's no official ruling.

Q: Seeing the reaction from your viewers, would you have handled the situation differently if you could turn back time?

A: I think I would've handled it differently. I know one thing was that a lot of people were hating 'cause of the GoFundMe, which I never got any of [the money from]. I sent it back to GoFundMe. I told people on TikTok, if you want a refund, go get a refund. I'm giving this over to GoFundMe. So, I gave it over to GoFundMe because people were just hating, being so vicious. I was like, "I don't want any of this money. It's blood money. I don't want it." But I gave over the GoFundMe completely to GoFundMe and they put it in a general fund or something. So, I would probably not [start the GoFundMe]. All I was thinking when I made it was, I wanna help my family. I wanna make sure they're okay.

I would've taken a step back and not done that 'cause we ended up being okay. The entire community came together, gave my family money. They gave my family anywhere they wanted to stay completely for free. They helped. I think that a lot of people hated thinking I was doing a cash grab or whatever. But it's really like, I just saw it as I'm trying to help my parents and I feel like anybody else in my situation, if their parents' house burns down, they're gonna try to do the same thing.

Q: Moving on, you've been reporting on the potential TikTok ban in the U.S. lately. What's your take on the potential ban?

A: I think I'm a little different than most other people, 'cause most other people, they've been on TikTok for maybe a couple months, maybe like a year, maybe two years. I've been on it since the very start. I love this app. It's my favorite app. Probably the app I've spent the most time on. So, I'm really sad. I don't want it to go. I want TikTok to be here forever. I think it's kind of unfair to target this app when every other social media app is doing the same thing that they're accusing TikTok of doing. But they don't make money from TikTok, so they're gonna target TikTok. It's kind of sad. It's just unfair treatment. It's also unsubstantiated claims, like they keep claiming things and they say like, "Oh trust us, trust us."

But you've given us nothing to trust. Done nothing but screwed us over. I have a lot of friends who make a living from TikTok via TikTok Shop via being a creator/ I know their livelihoods are about to be destroyed. I don't think they have a good view of the people that they're actually hurting by doing this. But for whatever reason, they're gonna do what they're gonna do, whether it's for the people or against them, they're gonna do it. I don't really have much of a say, but I'll use as much of my platform as I can to get what I can across.

Q: How do you see the ban affecting content creators?

A: Well, I don't know if it'll be that much different, 'cause there's already Reels, there's already Shorts, there's already that. I think from a social impact, I don't think it'll really be much different. But from people losing jobs, people not being able to make ends meet and stuff, that's gonna be the real impact. That's what's so sad to me, they're trying to shut down an app that people rely on for their livelihood.

Q: Do you see the ban affecting your content?

A:I'll be okay no matter what. I post to YouTube, I post to Instagram and especially lately, they've been doing like really, really well, like in the millions. So I have a similar viewer base on both and all it takes is time to build up the platform to where I have a similar follower base. But for me, TikTok is personal. I've been on here since 2016, so eight years. I have over 6,000 videos on the app. It's just very sad. But I think I'll be fine. I think the real problem is smaller creators that won't be fine.

Q: Why do you think it is that the U.S. has put so much effort into banning TikTok specifically?

A:Well, I think it's by design because we're fed constantly, "TikTok is bad, TikTok is bad, China is bad, this is bad, this is bad." I think that's what it is, they try to demonize it as much as possible because I don't think they've liked TikTok from the start. They've been trying to ban it for like four years now. So, I think it's kind of telling.

I think there's this whole narrative of "TikTok is bad" but nobody can really think of anything,. "Because it's cringe, TikTok is bad because…" and there's this whole narrative of all that. I think it's really just propagated by people. On reels, people will post like, "Oh, Reels is better than TikTok." I don't really use reels if I'm honest. I post on there, but I don't use it. Reels and YouTube Shorts, they're okay at what they do, but they're lightyears behind TikTok when it comes to spreading things, when it comes to trends. There's a reason that every trend starts on TikTok. Everything big starts on TikTok. I feel like YouTube and Instagram kind of suppress users a lot more than TikTok does.

Q: Do you have any advice for people who might want to start careers as content creators?

A: Well, if you wanna be in social media, just keep going. That's what I did. First six months, I had absolutely no success. Then it kind of changed a little bit. Then little by little, it grew, it grew, it grew. But you got to stick with it and keep doing it and figure out what works the best as you go. 'Cause some people will just do the same thing for years and have no success. I've seen many creators like that. You've got to adapt.

I don't necessarily mean this in like a negative way at all, but like, you know who Pinkydoll is, right? So, she kind of got stuck doing one specific trend. Now she's not at the top of her game. She's not necessarily doing terrible, but she's not doing the best. I think what happens a lot of times with people of her nature is, they'll do one thing and even though they might be really good at that one thing, they'll just do one thing and never change and people get tired. That's kind of why I chose the route that I go with doing news and trends and stuff, is there's always new things to talk about. I would say pick a niche like that. Don't necessarily lock yourself into being like an NPC streamer or being a meme or whatever.

Thank you to Noah Glenn Carter for talking with us. You can follow Noah on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram @NoahGlennCarter.