You never know exactly what it’ll take for fame to turn its attention your way. For RichBoi Streeter, it took getting smacked upside the head with a wet mop.

Streeter and his significant other form the Alabama-based online duo Streeter and Neisha. He’s a rapper from Montgomery, she’s an entrepreneur from Huntsville, which is where they’re based these days. They’ve been cultivating a niche as social media entertainers and influencers with a mix of goofy pranks (usually on each other), slice-of-life videos and occasional reviews of food and other products. It’s a grab bag of material, making it a little random what might click. The biggest click so far came via a prank that got shared by the likes of Snoop Dogg (whose Instagram post of the gag has gotten more than 7 million views) and was shown this summer on MTV’s “Ridiculousness.” In the clip, Neisha is mopping the floor and Streeter, facing the camera, casually and very deliberately “spills” some soda, waiting to see her reaction – which is to clock him with the mop.

You can wonder if it’s a setup. You can wonder if it really qualifies as a prank, or if it’s just silly young people being young and silly. Such analysis is beside the point: Streeter starts out mischievous and ends up looking like he got more than he bargained for, with Neisha scolding him that he’s going to get to finish the mopping. It’s a whole little morality play in roughly 30 seconds, a morsel of content custom-made for the TikTok age.

The couple’s shenanigans won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, thanks to the occasional profanity, off-the-cuff vibe and other factors, but they’re up to three-quarters of a million followers on TikTok. That’s a long way from social media superstardom, but far enough along that they can taste the possibility of making it a full-time income. In that, they’re representative of a lot of grassroots content creators working to make a business of it.

They recently took time to share a few insights.

Getting boosted by celebrities or shows is random.

Really random. As in, so random they didn’t know they’d been featured on “Ridiculousness” until they heard about it third-hand. “That situation, somebody had dropped it on our TikTok video, like, ‘I seen this video on “Ridiculousness,’” said Streeter. “We thought they was lying about it. We had to go look for ourselves.”

Random or not, it has an impact.

“We were gaining about 10k [followers] every day,” said Streeter. “And then we just got posted on Worldstar yesterday. That was the egg prank. That hit a million-some on Worldstar in 24 hours.” (Aggregation site Worldstar Hip-Hop has noticed Streeter & Neisha several times; in this case they used Facebook Reels to share a prank in which Streeter balances an egg on Neisha’s head while she sleeps, then tickles her ear, prompting her to swat and smash the egg.)

Setting boundaries is tricky.

The couple’s toddler son, Kaiden, has become a regular presence in their content stream. They try to keep him out of the picture sometimes when there’s going to be content that might not be appropriate for him. “Some stuff we don’t show him, we try to do when he’s not around, if there’s cussing or stuff like that,” said Neisha. But he knows what’s going on. “He’ll be saying ‘Let’s do videos’ every five minutes,” said Streeter.

Planning is overrated.

“I was, like, seeing what she would do,” Streeter said of the mop incident. “I always pick, like you pick at your girl and try to make her mad. That’s something I always do.”

You’ve got to have a thick skin.

“We know they’re going to take it as entertainment sometimes, and sometimes we know people are going to come with hateful comments,” said Streeter. “We’re used to it now. There’s a lot that comes with entertainment.”

Deciding what’s right for what platform takes some thought.

“We’re still kind of learning,” said Neisha. “We get more support on TikTok…We’ll post a video on TikTok and if it goes up on there, then we’ll decide to post it [on YouTube or Facebook.] On Facebook, sometimes you get the likes and sometimes you don’t.”

The chemistry is real.

“We just show the world who we really are,” said Neisha. “They love it,” said Streeter. “Some people try to fit a different character. That’s who we are, really, and it’s gotten us this far,” Neisha said, adding that people begun to recognize them in real life. “‘Oh, that’s y’all from TikTok?’ That feels good,” she said. “We didn’t really expect it to get anywhere, we’re just trying something. Our platform is growing every day.”

Not every relationship could survive this.

That’s why the relationship is the real star of their show. “We’ve got a fan base that loves pranks,” said Streeter. “So we try give them pranks. But sometime we throw the couple videos in. They love couples. TikTok, they love the couple videos. … They be wanting to do pranking videos with their boyfriends or girlfriends. We’ve been together for seven years. We met at JobCorps. We’ve been together for a minute. They folks who really know us, know that we’re funny.” It also takes persistence. “Keep going it at it, don’t give up,” said Neisha. “Always apply yourself to what you’re trying to do so it can grow.”

Streeter & Neisha online:

TikTok

YouTube

Facebook

Twitter