Meet Teera Somsak, a 20-year-old college student majoring in public relations at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
She told BuzzFeed News she first downloaded TikTok last year and that she got it as a joke after she heard about the app from her sister, Tarie. Then she couldn't stop using it.
"I had always thought TikTok was for the younger generation," she said, "and that I was too old to be on the app, but nonetheless she persuaded me to finally get on it.
"So we could both learn dances together and laugh about videos we found on our For You page."
Somsak and her sister went viral after Somsak posted a video of her realizing that she had used her grandmother's urn as a phone stand.
She said the story of how her grandmother's urn ended up as a phone stand is pretty random.
Somsak and her little sister went into their mother's room to film a TikTok dance.
"We had just moved to a new house so everything was out of place," Somsak said, "and I am usually never in my mom’s room so I don’t know the ins and outs.
"I presume we were using our mom’s room because it was the cleanest out of the both of ours."
She said they used a lamp as a stand at first, but they didn't like the angle. "I switched to facing towards the closet," Somsak said. "I saw this tiny teacup looking thing so I quickly grabbed it because there was nothing that seemed sturdy enough to be able to prop up my phone."
And that's when the TikTok happened. She said she got ready to film, and her sister said "OMG, that is our grandma" just as the video started filming.
"I was so shocked and slightly laughing on the inside because in my head I was like, OMG, why did I not know it was her?'" she said. "Like, I had never seen this small tiny teacup-looking thing, so I was so, so confused."
The video currently has 17 million views. People responded with a lot of dark humor.
Somsak said she loved most of the responses. "I love dark humor so I found all the slightly offensive jokes to be super hilarious," she said.
She said a lot of people seem to be curious about the size of the urn. Somsak said she asked her mom, who told her that there are two other urns that Somsak's aunts have.
Somsak said she loved the fact that she went viral and said, "It had been my birthday a few days before so I literally kept thinking it was a birthday gift from my grandma to go viral.
"Or somehow she was communicating with me through all of this."
Somsak said she was in awe as she kept checking the numbers of likes, views, and followers after she went viral. "Like, how is this happening to me?" she said. "It is still surreal and crazy to me to think about how many people were seeing that video."
She said she was nervous to show her mom the video because the TikTok was at the same time as the one-year anniversary of her grandma's death. "But she was surprisingly really happy," she said. "She thought it was so funny."
Somsak described her grandmother as a sweet soul who was always the best to be around. "She was an insane cook and was so, so funny," she said.
"If she were around still, she would definitely be laughing so hard at the video," she said. "She passed away due to a heart attack at the end of May 2019, which was super rough to go through as a family, but we all made it through together."
