Who is the guy on TikTok at Mardi Gras?

The video is simple: a man wearing a blue polo shirt, jeans, aviator sunglasses and a single strand of Mardi Gras beads stands behind a barricade during a Lafayette parade, lip-syncing and bopping along to Kevin Gates’ “Thinking with my D***.”

He’s not doing choreography or acting crazy. Yet in just 10 seconds the video captures that ineffable spirit of Mardi Gras. He’s got his drink in his cup, his song on the stereo, and Carnival all around him. What more do you need?

Mardi Gras has always been difficult to translate to outsiders—many associate it solely with New Orleans, and with Bourbon Street and "Girls Gone Wild" at that—but millions of people around the world have begun to understand the regional landscape and simple joys of Carnival through the work of John Weatherall III, a Lafayette-based videographer, photographer and now, TikTok sensation.

John Weatherall III is a Lafayette-based videographer, photographer and now, TikTok sensation whose Mardi Gras videos focus more on the spectators than the parades.

This past December Weatherall, a longtime documentarian of parades around Acadiana, began posting clips on TikTok and Instagram from Mardi Gras 2020, to get people excited for the long-awaited return of regular Carnival festivities. It wasn’t just locals who paid attention: before long, he’d gone viral several times over, and by the end of the season he’d amassed a quarter million followers on TikTok.

Viral views

His video of Steven Barbosa, of Youngsville, rapping along to Kevin Gates has racked up 54 million views on the platform, garnering thousands of enchanted comments (“The flavor in this video is immaculate”) and getting reposted, remixed and parodied countless times.

In another Weatherall video to go viral, a police officer in Church Point dances the Tootsie Roll while on duty at a parade. In another, a group of teens in Carencro jig on the bed of a pickup truck. A woman holding a baby in one hand and a wig in the other hurries over to the parade route in Scott to dance to “Ratchet” by Boosie Badazz.

A police officer in Church Point dances the Tootsie Roll while on duty at a parade.

“A lot of people have been cooped up since COVID, and they just want to see people have fun,” Weatherall said of the videos’ success. “It puts people in a good mood, lets them escape from the negativity of the world. A lot of people messaged saying, 'I used to live in Lafayette, and this makes me feel like I’m there, like I’m part of the party.'”

Weatherall grew up going to parades in Lafayette with his family, “and they used to film the parades with the home video camera,” he said. “They used to teach us kids, me and my sisters, how to operate the VHS camera. So I’ve been doing it for so long—Mardi Gras has always been a tradition for us. We love it.”

Whereas most popular representations of Mardi Gras focus on the paraders—the floats and marching bands—Weatherall trains his lens on the spectacle happening in the audience.

Keeping the crowd 'crunk'

For many years, he’s been riding as a member and videographer of Krewe de Krunk, a group of friends who ride in a number of Carnival parades around Acadiana. The krewe has several resident DJs (Mr. Fantastic, DJ Milez, and Big Leu) who play club favorites by mostly local artists such as Boosie, Level, and Mouse on tha Track—just the stuff to get hometown crowds to cut up.

And when they do, Weatherall is there with a steady hand—he doesn’t drink—and an iPhone 13 Pro Max to capture it all. “We just try to keep the crowd crunk the whole time,” he said.

“I document from the lineup all the way to the end. Once the parade rolls, I focus on the crowd, getting those shots of everyone having a good time. When I get home to edit, it takes me four to five hours to sort through the footage and put something together, like a recap video—a hype video.”

Weatherall, who works as a videographer for KLFY-TV, credits his best friend and coworker Gerald Gruenig with convincing him to start putting clips from his copious footage on TikTok.

The response was nearly immediate: in early January, a video of a man dancing with his children did well, “and it’s been going crazy ever since,” Weatherall said.

'Showing us, us'

According to Stephenson Waters, assistant professor of journalism at University of Louisiana–Lafayette, Weatherall’s videos are a new way of representing Mardi Gras because they’re “from the other side,” he said. “It’s always the camera facing the floats, but this is the opposite. It’s kind of showing us, us.”

More specifically, Weatherall’s videos showcase corners of Carnival that rarely get attention even within Louisiana. Weatherall filmed 10 full parades during the 2022 season, but none of them were in New Orleans. (He did attend the February second line parade of the Treme Sidewalk Steppers and caught Mayor LaToya Cantrell laying down some footwork, getting him another viral video.) Instead, small towns like Scott, Church Point, Carencro and Youngsville are the destinations making out-of-state viewers want to come see the Mardi Gras.

“Y’all people from Louisiana look like the most down to earth, accepting, most fun people in the country!!” said one TikTok user from Florida.

“A lot of people been inboxing me saying they’d love to come out next year,” Weatherall said.

Weatherall hashtags the names of the cities depicted in each video, and he also posts quieter behind-the-scenes moments, such as the raising of a Carnival flag in front of Carencro’s City Hall, or the crowning of Sunset’s king and queen of Mardi Gras 2022.

Laidback and fun

“A lot of people overlook the Lafayette area (in regard to Mardi Gras),” Weatherall said. “New Orleans is great, but I’m so glad to have a platform to showcase the area I grew up in. Mardi Gras here, it’s more laidback, more relaxed. Especially in the country towns, it’s just more fun. Everybody’s out there all day.”

Authentic moments of joy and humor can be rare on a platform like TikTok, which teems with creators performing directly to an online audience, whether through a dance challenge, a prank that may or may not be rehearsed or a makeup demo.

Weatherall captures the spontaneous moments that happen along a parade route, in which revelers perform for each other, not necessarily for likes and followers.

The beauty of Mardi Gras is as simple as is it ephemeral. “It’s people having fun, letting loose—a lot of those moments that we really wish we could hold onto,” Weatherall said.

Particularly over the past two years of loss and disruption, those fleeting moments are more precious than ever. “I’ve had someone say, ‘My friend passed away last year, and I’m so glad to have this memory of them.’ So being able to do stuff like that makes me happy.”