For this week’s Deep Dive Series, we’re interviewing Clapper creators, @TheTiralosiTwins.
@TheTiralosiTwins (also known as Alex and Cody) are Clapper creators who make content about their lives as identical twins. All of their videos are hilarious (even the ones about their cat) and have had the whole office laughing since we first came across their account. In this interview, we talked about the time they developed their own language, how they started their content creation career, their advice for new creators, and more!
Keep reading this Deep Dive to hear more about their inspiring story. Make sure to tune in every Thursday at 5pm CT on our @ClapperCreator account to listen to the bonus questions that will only be available on our live radio show: Clapper Talks.
Just have fun with it. If you enjoy creating it’s going to be contagious to the viewers.
Tell us a little bit about yourselves! We know you as @TheTiralosiTwins, but we’d love to learn a little more about each of you.
ALEX: Well we’re really pretty similar! We like golf right now and we’ve been watching the NHL playoffs, and things like that. We share probably 90% of the same interests. We’re pretty identical in that aspect. I guess the areas that we vary in…
CODY: I think it’s more of our personalities and not necessarily the hobbies. So I guess I’m more of the creative one, and I joke around more. And then you…
ALEX: And I might be more analytical in a sense of figuring out things and always trying to see what the next move is.
CODY: It’s kind of something that we figured out over time. At first used to have the same answers for everything, and going through different interviews and podcasts we’ve learned a little more about ourselves.
What does a day in your lives look like?
ALEX: We share an apartment in Florida.
CODY: And we try to keep our schedules the same so we can really focus on creating content at the right time, going Live, and keeping a pretty consistent schedule. In the morning we try to handle all the business of it, then we work out and come back. That’s usually when we film our content. After we work out we have more energy and we think a little clearer, so we get better ideas. We’ll film a few videos, do a Livestream, things like that. But anywhere in between is filled with whatever have to do during the day. Basically whatever comes up: brands, auditions, things like that.
Obviously the two of you are twins, but listeners might not know that you’re literally identical! Can you share a little more about that experience?
ALEX: I think the funniest aspects that people kind of get a kick out of (which we try not to do because we’ve figured it out now) is whenever we say something at the same time, people will kind of laugh and point it out. There have been a ton of times where we haven’t noticed, but people point it out.
CODY: And we always get the normal questions of if we have telepathy and things like that. I think it’s just that we spend enough time together to where, for the most part, we have a good understanding of what the other is thinking.
ALEX: We were trying to figure out how to describe it for people because we always get that question.
CODY: The best way we can describe it is that it’s kind of like when you have a friend you’re around all the time and you know exactly what their answer will be.
In one of your videos, you joked about having your own language! How did this develop? Is it something y’all still remember?
CODY: So before we could speak, our parents say we would make certain sounds or noises and we’d seem to understand each other.
ALEX: They’d have no clue what we were saying but somehow we’d understand! As we got older, I guess we’d just start speaking English.
We can tell that the two of you have a really special bond and are around each other a lot. Does the relationship you have as twins complicate your relationships – romantic or otherwise?
CODY: I would say…we’re pretty similar, so the friends that we have like both of us, and that’s a good thing. I feel like, if we were different, it could complicate things. Like, what if one of our friends liked one of us but not the other. We’re similar enough and make friends in a similar way to where we both get along with them. But if we weren’t twins and there was a year or two difference in us, or we moved to different cities, made separate friends, I could see that complicating things. But for the most part we kind of gravitate towards the same people.
ALEX: Now people have asked us if we would date identical twins. But we kind of thought about it and the chances of both of us liking both of the identical twins – like what if one of us only like one and got along and the others didn’t? And that posed an interesting question we kind of had to think about.
Since you’re literally identical, do you ever take advantage of that and switch places?
ALEX: That’s funny because we get that kind of question all the time. Really one of us would be stuck doing most of the work. If it was a like a clone that did what you wanted them to do, that would be kind of cool. But I think we’re both the kind of people that, I want to do my own work and I don’t want to do someone else’s work.
CODY: Yeah, and then you have to worry about maybe not trying as hard on this, then it gets kind of out of hand.
ALEX: And what if your twin gets you a bad grade? Or a worse grade than you would have gotten? You’ve got to take that into consideration as well!
CODY: I think a lot of people would do that, though. That’s probably one of the top 3 comments we’ve gotten.
So, when did you join Clapper? How did your journey as content creators begin?
ALEX: So we joined Clapper pretty recently – about 2 months ago.
CODY: Yeah, it’s a great app. I like how you can say what you want and it seems like the algorithm doesn’t favor anything specific. Which is good because then you don’t feel like you have to fit this specific category. You can make more creative and original content.
ALEX: But as far as when we started creating, we actually saw one of our first videos and it was from late 2018. So we’ve been creating for a lot longer than we thought we were. Just to give a little more backstory: we wanted to do YouTube and we were just figuring our way out there. Then we started on TikTok. We started off doing more skits, which we might get back to because we find that it’s the perfect way to express our personalities, our creativity, things like that. So we started off in that, then we started doing more trends, and then that brings us to Livestreams. For the past year we’ve Livestreamed a lot, and then we came to Clapper. And we really appreciate that Clapper has a really good community. Everyone’s so supportive.
CODY: Yeah, I think that’s definitely one of the best things about the platform.
A lot of your content is about being twins. Whose idea was it to start creating this content, and how did they come up with it?
CODY: Wanting to create has always been both of us. We used to look at videos and go “oh, I would do that instead” before we even got into it. And then I saw that TikTok was starting to do really well. We were actually on it before COVID, when it really blew up. We found that skits were just something that…you can’t really hear your voice or get much a personality trough trends as much. You kind of can, but it’s not the same.
ALEX: And to answer more of your question, we both started with separate accounts because we were staring off. We were going to try being creators and see how it worked and we posted the same video on each of our accounts. The one on my account ended up doing pretty well and going a little viral. So we ended up just posting on my account for a good two months.
CODY: We started from scratch because at the time we took a poll of if everyone thought we should make a twin account. And the feedback we got was that we should. It was kind of funny, too, because we completely ignored the whole twin thing. We made skits and didn’t even acknowledge us being twins basically. And then we came together and decided to make it a twin account. It would help us get more content out there and a lot of viewers might like that. And around the time we started posting consistently on that account, our other accounts got deleted. So we were mainly on that account and more twin style content.
What do you enjoy most about Clapper? In what ways do you feel like Clapper needs improvement?
CODY: I think as far as the community goes, we definitely like how supportive everyone is and how it’s structured on Clapper to where you can post whatever you want, whenever you want, and get the views. You have more freedom to create or voice your opinion, I think every platform could do that. As far as critiques go…I guess more insight into analytics? I’m not sure, I didn’t really dive into that on here. But I can’t really think of critiques at the moment. I think it’s a great platform and I’m surprised at how great it’s done, because it’s super hard to make platform like this.
What advice would you give new users that want to be successful on Clapper?
CODY: I think the first thing is consistency. Everyone always says it, but consistency is very important. So is starting to figure out what kind of content you enjoy posting and what other people like. Trying to find that place where you can enjoy it and your audience can to. And I think something really cool comes out of that.
ALEX: The hardest part in our experience is finding your niche. For people just getting stared in creating content, trying to figure out what they want to do – you can do basically anything with your content. And it’s a little confusing on what exact niche you want to start with or what you want to do. Just pick a niche, stick with it, and your intuition or what you feel will guide you.
CODY: And at the end of the day, make it fun. Your audience wants to get to know you better and see you have a good time. And you don’t just want to put out content just for the idea, you want to spark an emotion in people. That’s a big thing of it, too. Whether it’s laughter, whether it’s just any sort of emotion you can have the audience connect with.
ALEX: Yeah, and like you said earlier, just have fun with it. If you enjoy creating it’s going to be contagious to the viewers.
CODY: And definitely make it shareable! If you make them laugh, they’ll want to share with their friends, and you’ll grow so much that way.
We hope you enjoyed getting to know @TheTiralosiTwins! To see more of their hilarious content, check out their Clapper profile. For our last Deep Dive on @_Kicks, read here.