If you’ve spent enough time scrolling through TikTok, you might have seen a video from an account like @tybuggyreviews, a handle with half a million followers that exclusively posts videos selling products through the TikTok Shop.
The creator, whose verified Instagram account identifies him as Tarik Garrett, used the @tybuggyreviews account to pitch viewers on supplements, water flossers, earbuds, workout machines, bible study guides, probiotics for women to help “that smell down there,” watch bands, inspirational hoodies, inspirational T-shirts, face massagers, foot massagers, rhinestone necklaces, oil pulling kits, and colon cleanses.
In the TikTok Shop, creators earn a commission for each sale linked to their account. Garrett’s product videos got tens of thousands of views. A few even topped a million views. But nothing from his account took off quite like his sales pitch for an obscure 2019 publication called The Lost Book of Herbal Remedies.
“Now I see why they’re trying to remove TikTok. This book right here? This book of herbal remedies? They do not want us to see this book,” Garrett said at the beginning of one Shop video, referring to a new US law that requires TikTok’s Chinese parent company to either sell the app or face a ban. TikTok is challenging the law in court, arguing that lawmakers citing national security concerns as a reason to pass the bill did not adequately argue why those concerns should supersede the First Amendment. The law, to be clear, does not cite the Lost Book of Herbal Remedies’s availability on the TikTok Shop as a reason for banning the platform.
Garrett posted his pitch for the book on April 15. As of May 7, the video had more than 16 million views. Garrett opened the book and showed pages of its recommendations, urging users to take screenshots (and purchase a copy of their own) before it’s too late.
The camera lingered on a list of plants that, the book claimed, were treatments for cancer, drug addiction, heart attacks, and herpes. As of Wednesday, the listing for The Lost Book of Herbal Remedies that Garrett linked to has more than 60,000 sales on the TikTok Shop. To put that number in perspective, appearing on a bestseller list generally requires 5,000–10,000 sales in a week.
And that interest isn’t staying exclusively on TikTok. Google search interest in the book’s title spiked on the same day Garrett posted his video. The Lost Book of Herbal Remedies was, as of Wednesday, May 8, ranked 10 on Amazon’s bestseller list for books, and has appeared toward the top of Amazon’s bestseller rankings for the past three weeks.
I sent a handful of Garrett’s videos advertising the book, along with about a half dozen additional widely viewed videos from other creators promoting The Lost Book of Herbal Remedi
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