Kallmekris (real name Kris Collins) is a Canadian TikTok star who shot to fame during the coronavirus pandemic due to her hilarious videos. Kris, a former hairdresser, was surprised at the range of content on TikTok after her brother convinced her to download the app.
Collins spent three days taking in the humor, dances, DIY projects, and everything else about TikTok before she started creating content. TikTok has helped grow her followings on other social media apps as well.
This piece will look at Kris’ career, her experiences with fans, and her love life.
Collins’ first attempt at hairdressing ended in disaster as her client’s hair fell off
Kris Collins was born on 1st July 1996 and is the second-oldest of six siblings. Before TikTok, Collins worked on television and movie sets and as a hairdresser. In a Q&A posted on her channel in August 2020, she described working on the set of Riverdale as pretty fun. “The set was pretty good and the cast was relatively nice,” she said.
By the time the coronavirus pandemic hit, Kris was into her third year as a hairdresser, and she claims that she wasn’t good at it. Kris’ first attempt at hairdressing ended in catastrophe as Kris’ client lost her hair following a botched bleach. “The first week, I bleached somebody’s hair and it turned green somehow and fell off,” Collins said in her August 2020 Q&A.
Kris started posting on TikTok after the coronavirus pandemic forced her to abandon her hairdressing business
Quarantine rules forced Kris to abandon hairdressing as the Canadian government tried to curb the spread of COVID-19. Kris’ love affair with TikTok started after her brother convinced her to download the app. Collins harbored dreams of comedy and content creation, but she no intention of pursuing those dreams before TikTok.
With time on her hands and a camera phone, Collins started posting lip-syncing comedy clips with clever captions and hilarious facial expressions. As her following grew, Kris gathered the courage to create original skits. In her first self-made skit, she pretended to be her mom, and as she told Vancouver Is Awesome, people liked it.
Kris’ creative process involves writing a skit and adapting it to suit TikTok. Her most popular personas include a vampire-obsessed version of her 12-year-old self, a Boston bro-dude named Chad, a fed-up mom, and a tiny-handed toddler. The troublesome tiny-handed toddler is by far the most liked on TikTok.
The toddler’s tiny hands have become part of Kris’ brand and have sparked a ‘tiny hands’ craze on the platform. Kris told Vancouver Is Awesome that she had doesn’t understand how she got TikTok famous. “Every time I hit a new milestone, I still don’t understand it, but I appreciate it,” she explained. Collins cherishes TikTok as it gave her a platform to express her creativity:
“I never joined TikTok to become TikTok famous. I literally did it to pass the time and all this kind of happened. But I’ve always been super into comedy – when I was little I always wanted to be a stand up comedian, all that kind of stuff. So now that all this is kind of happening, it is kind of cool that I can start to have platforms where I can be creative.”
Kris is a certified TikTok star, but she is worried that the fame might go away as fast as it came. However, she plans to ‘ride the wave’ for as long as the winds blow in her favor. She explained:
“I just take it down to [the fact that] the algorithm likes me right now, and it might not tomorrow. I might just come to a halt or lose followers at any point, but for right now it’s great. I’m so elated and blessed and humbled by this whole experience. If it ends tomorrow, like, this was amazing but for right now, it’s very cool.”
Collins opened up about her battle with depression and suicidal thoughts
In late May 2021, Collins did something she rarely does: post a serious video. She started the video with a trigger warning, informing viewers that she’d talk about mental health issues.
Kris was diagnosed with depression when she was young. Her mom suffers from depression, so she figured out that Kris had it early on.
Collins pretended to be happy with socializing, but deep down, she loved isolation. She kept the depression hidden from friends because she feared stigmatization. “I also just never wanted to be like a burden on anybody let alone my parents but like my friends,” she said.
Anxiety and panic attacks followed in high school, which increased her feelings of loneliness. In school, she became known as the quiet girl who never went to parties or did drugs.
Kris hit rock bottom after one of her friends committed suicide. She resolved never to commit suicide after witnessing people’s reactions to her friend’s tragic death:
“I saw everybody’s reation to that and that’s what prevented me from ever taking it that far because I saw how many people were affected and how much people were hurt. I know so many people that were super close to him and just wish he was still here.”
Still, Collins understood how her friend felt before he made that fateful decision. “When you are in that moment of darkness, you feel like there is no escape,” Kris said.
Kris lived in denial about her depression and refused to cooperate with therapists. As time went by, the drugs started to work, and she began to have fun with friends. Unfortunately, she was raped, erasing all the progress she’d made.
“I shut down completely – I was on autopilot for the next year,” she explained. Collins told nobody as she was embarrassed and didn’t think anybody believed her. Furthermore, she feared that her conservative family would find out she was sexually active.
Suicidal thoughts plagued Collins, but the idea of putting her family in pain held her back. Getting a supportive boyfriend and taking drugs helped Kris improve dramatically.
However, she later developed anorexia, which she described as difficult to explain. Thanks to her family, her boyfriend Aaron, and love from social media, Collins overcame that setback:
“The only way to get better is to tell people and to acknowledge it and getting messages from you guys. You guys don’t know what you did for me. It is because of you and my family and Aaron that I am still here.”
Kris used to reply to her all of her comments, but she got overwhelmed due to the number of followers and hate comments
The hardest part about TikTok fame for Kris was adapting to constant social media use. She was previously the kind of person to post ‘once or twice a year’ and subsequently delete the posts. Creating content for TikTok, despite it being time-consuming, was fun, but the relentless pressure she felt to communicate with her followers quickly became overwhelming.
TikTok stars rarely respond to fan comments but Kris’ couldn’t help it. At one point, she replied to so many comments that TikTok assumed that she was a bot and banned her from replying to more comments. Collins’ relentless desire to please her ever-growing followers by replying to their comments started to take a toll on her mental health.
“It got to a certain point where I was literally spending hours answering back to everybody and I’m like, ‘This is not healthy for me,’” she told Vancouver Is Awesome. Kris strives to react to as many comments as possible but she’s realized that she can’t please all of her followers.
The comments section can also be a toxic place, Kris revealed.“You’re going to see 1000 really awesome comments and you see one bad one… it always weighs more,” she said. Kris has learned to ignore the negativity while embracing positivity.
Kris’ fans also interact with her by sending her gifts, art, and letters to her PO Box. During one of her filmed trips to collect fan mail, Kris drank a Red Bull. Unbeknown to her, fans spammed Red Bull in the comments section, urging the company to sponsor Kris.
Eventually, a company representative reached out, and according to Collins, she has a lifetime supply of the energy drink. Red Bull also flew Kris and her boyfriend to the top of a mountain in British Columbia to celebrate her 10-million follower milestone.
Even with a mask and a hoodie, Kris often gets recognized in public. Collins describes her platinum blonde hair as ‘a dead giveaway.’ She told Vancouver Is Awesome that she doesn’t believe that’s she’ll get used to the fame:
“Some people want to take pictures and things like that, but I never want to ask if somebody wants a picture. So I just stand there [and say] ‘You have a great day,’ or I’ll follow them [on Instagram or TikTok] or something like that. I’m still getting used to it – I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.”
Kris and her ex-boyfriend Aaron broke up after six years and remain friends
Kris and her boyfriend Aaron met at a barbeque party nearly six years ago. They struck up a connection and planned their first date on Kris’s birthday. “It was so fun,” Kris said in a boyfriend tag Q&A. “We saw Mad Max. It was on my birthday. We went to McDonalds, we got chicken nuggets.”
Aaron and Kris are set to celebrate six years together in July 2021. In an August 2020 Instagram post, Aaron dedicated the following message to Kris:
“5 years later! Happy Anniversary My Love. ‘Take my hand. Take my whole life too. For I can’t help falling in love with you.’”
Fans started to enquire about a breakup in October 2021 after noticing Kris’ cryptic messages about her boyfriend. For instance, during a YouTube Q&A Kris declined to answer whether she was in a relationship.
Kris responded to speculation by confirming the breakup. She posted the following message on her TikTok page: “Tired of being asked if we’re together. We are still good friends and we care for each other dearly. Just grew apart.”