If you’re a person who spends a chunk of their day scrolling the internet, primarily on the TikTok app, you might’ve heard the rumor that there are vampires roaming the streets of New York. TikTok account @SomethingAboutVampires is an account that has gone viral, with over 47.1k cumulative likes on two of their major vampire TikToks, for spreading the word. So, what’s the deal? Are there really vampires in New York City?
The answer is a solid maybe. The first TikTok on the @SomethingAboutVampires page contains flashes of article headlines that imply several unexplained attacks on citizens of New York City by an unknown animal of some sort. It’s pretty creepy.
But vampires aren’t really the subject of this article. Our real protagonists are the @SomethingAboutVampires team, who can be found on Instagram and TikTok by the same handle. They also have a rad playlist on Spotify for those interested in having a soundtrack for their vampire research.
And if any fellow TikTok fans decided to look at the bio of both @SomethingAboutVampires public social media accounts, they would have discovered the disclaimer that labels the project a “work of fiction.”
Sorry to burst your vampire-belief-bubble. But hey, this doesn’t rule out the possibility of real vampires. Unfortunately, it probably does rule out the possibility of any real vampires showing up in the work done by the @SomethingAboutVampires team.
Writer and director Yaroslava Bondar, who is responsible for the creation of the screenplay that we’ll see develop on both social media platforms, wrote in an interview via email that the goal of the project was publicizing the play she had written, among other things.
“It's also an opportunity to explore some questions the play asks,” Bondar said. “They’re questions about immortality and infinity, but also love and how to move on after a (toxic) relationship … Another goal of ours is just to have fun with these words, these characters, and this story.”
Because so many TikTok viewers were quick to believe that this fictional piece was actually a report on true events, Bondar noted that the project now also deals with misinformation.
“TikTok has also given us some new ideas about misinformation and how we verify the information that we’re presented with online,” Bondar wrote. “We're curious to see if we can explore media literacy with this play.”
Bondar also gave us a spoiler-free version of the story for anyone who has yet to catch on to the fictional plot of the project.
“The play tells the story of Alexandra, a 24-year-old journalism student who, when NYC is being terrorized by a vampire, seeks out to find said vampire by interviewing other vampires that have known her,” Bondar wrote. “Through these interviews she hopes to find the vampire responsible and learn about vampirism up close … but how close is she willing to get?”
The other members of the @SomethingAboutVampires project team are Natasha Rene and Orla Bordeaux. Rene, Bordeaux and Bondar are all students at NYU Tisch. They came to publicize the project through the Playwrights HoriZoom theater festival of the Playwright Horizons Theater school.
Rene is the TikTok expert of the team. She runs her own popular anime TikTok account, Natanimerene, which has over 93k followers. Her duties include editing, helping to film, creating closed captions for and posting the TikTok videos of the project. She also plays Alexandra, the protagonist of the play.
Bordeaux is the Instagram manager of the team. She uploads TikToks to Instagram and works on creating additional content to beef up the project’s presence on the app, which includes visually enticing posts and interactive vampire quizzes for followers.
Bondar noted that she also has multiple responsibilities in the project besides creation and directing. These include portraying the three vampires who appear in the plot and curating both the style and design of the project and its costumes.
As far as inspiration for the play goes, Bondar sited an amalgamation of sources. Among these were Twilight (2005), the Doomsday clock that was set up near Union Square in 2020, The White Stripes, The Great Gatsby (1925), Bondar’s friends and ex-lovers, Winona Rider in the 90s, New York City and the pandemic. If you want to know what the heck these things could come together to inspire, check out the @SomethingAboutVampires project.
As of right now, the project will likely be fully uploaded by early May of this year, so keep an eye on those social media accounts for the latest story updates.