It took Joanne Kristo a while to believe it, but her identical twin sons, Martin and Josip, 19, are indeed, famous.
“I’m not a computer buff myself, so it’s never something I considered,” she says. “Some of my friends would say, ‘We watched this or that. Look this up! You should know who Twin Pranks is!’”
A little over a year since her sons’ TikTok profile Twin Pranks went viral, their signature brand of goofy comedy skits and pranks has attracted more than 676,700 followers tuning in to more than 400 videos uploaded to date, with combined views of over 400 million. Over on YouTube, where they have posted more than 50 videos, they have garnered a respectable 4,600 subscribers and racked up another half million views.
“We blew up from TikTok,” explains Martin. “Now our Youtube is also taking off and it feels amazing.”
It has gotten to the point where Martin and Josip’s faces are showing up as “suggested content” in their dad, Damir’s news feed, and recently a cashier at one of Joanne’s favourite stores asked if she was the mom of the Kristo twins.
Always the fair-minded parent, Joanne makes a point to let anyone who asks know that, actually, she is the proud mom of THREE boys: the eldest, Jakov, a 22-year-old student electrician, plays an important role vetting video ideas, making sure the humour stays respectful and doesn't stray into territory that could bring infamy instead of fame to the Kristo clan.
"Even if they are doing something funny, they always add that serious moment," Joanne says. "For example, if they have a TikTok about pretending to be drunk, they will always add that they don’t support underaged drinking, or drinking and driving."
The twins have been making videos for six years, starting out on cell phones and computers, and later investing birthday and Christmas money into more memory cards, lights and equipment. Martin and Josip often wait until everyone is out of the house to stage their videos. Despite cohabiting with the content creators, Joanne says she and her husband are often as surprised as the viewers are to discover what the latest video is about.
“Most often, we come home and don't have any idea they had been filming,” she says. “(Later) I’ll see they’ve been cracking eggs on their heads or they’re doing stuff with shaving cream, but there’s never ever been a single time I had to pick up after them. It was almost like a secret.”
For Martin and Josip, they always knew they would make it one day -- they’ve been saying as much since they were small.
But no one knew it was going to happen on November 12, 2019.
That was the day, about a week after they joined TikTok, that they shared a pair of videos they had made a day earlier. In the first video, Martin throws pencils across a ping pong table. Magically, every shot lands cleanly into the plastic cup situated in front of the camera. Viewers are then invited “#behindthescenes” to a second, panned out video showing Martin throwing pencils while the camera person, Josip, drops different pencils into the cup at just the right moment to create the optical effect of Martin's string of perfect shots.
“We uploaded the (last) video and within 10 minutes, it had 100,000 views, an hour later, it had one million,” Martin recalls. “It was crazy. It was like a dream. We were very excited and happy.” Since it was a Tuesday, they were in class, as usual, at Mohawk College in Hamilton, where they are second year students, studying police foundations. Throughout the day, they kept checking their phones, watching the views tick up. Within 24 hours, they hit 30 million views from the US, Canada, Europe and all around the world.
Before long, the #behindthescenes trend they started was being picked up by big stars like Will Smith and Jason Derulo, who made their own #behindthescenes videos. Mere months after their first viral video, they started noticing that they were getting recognized offline too. When they’re out and about, fans stop them for selfies and for t-shirts to be signed. People lean out of vehicles screaming “Twin Pranks!”
With hundreds of thousands of fans, Martin and Josip have landed some TikTok product promotions and started generating YouTube ad revenue. What was once a side hobby has taken on the feel of a serious part-time job. They now spend about ten hours a week coming up with ideas, editing videos and interacting with fans. Like any job, there are days when it’s work. But “there are people who look forward to our videos,” Martin says. “We have a job to make people smile. We do emails every single day. We do a lot of collaborations. You have to be creative because if you don’t show your creativity, there’s no reason to watch.”
When the pair graduates from college, they’re hoping to make it their full-time job and see where it goes. “We don’t just want to be social media influencers,” Josip says. “We want to be actors or have our own Netflix show or be in a movie. We want to try to take it somewhere farther than just making videos. With this kind of platform, you can evolve to music, you can make your own company, you can literally do anything you set your mind to.”
The secret to their success? “I think what made us get a following this big is because we’re twins, we can use that to our advantage,” Martin says. “We can make content lots of people can’t make. We think alike too, so it’s not that hard to come up with video ideas. We just be ourselves.”
For kids starting out wanting to make their own videos, the twins have these words of advice: “Never give up. Whatever people tell you, as long as you believe in yourself, that’s all you need.”
