H00pify is a content creator known for his bizarrely entertaining videos that crossover the worlds of sports and brainrot. Since 2020, H00pify has garnered roughly a million combined followers across all his social media accounts. He has become one of the main characters in the brainrot community and played a big part in ushering in the modern brainrot era as we know it with his viral Baby Gronk Rizz King video.

More recently, he's collaborated with some huge social media personalities, including the Costco Guys themselves, AJ and Big Justice.

We recently spoke with H00pify about his content creation origins, brainrot, how his content has changed over the years and more.

@h00pify Do you think Baby Gronk will lead LSU to a National Championship? #livvy #livvydunne #babygronk #rizz #rizzking #lsu #lsufootball #collegefootball #louisianastateuniversity #football #henrydetolla #h00pify #detolla ♬ Nfl Theme – Official Sports Bar Version – Playin' Buzzed

Q: It's great to talk with you, H00pify. Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

A: My name’s Hery De Tolla, I go by H00pify on social media: TikTok, YouTube, Instagram. I’m from New Hampshire originally, just graduated from college in Massachusetts. Something people might not know about me is that I was actually an electrical engineering major.

What I’m most known for, probably, is the Baby Gronk video, I said, “Baby Gronk rizzed up Livvy Dunne.” That was my most viral moment so far on the internet. Hopefully, there’s more coming soon but when people see me they say, “Oh you’re the Baby Gronk guy.” I say, “Yeah, that’s me.”

Q: How did you get into content creation?

A: Growing up, I was a huge YouTube guy; I’d watch YouTube all the time. I’d watch Cody Ko. Not the best person to say right now. I’d watch RiceGum, Faze Banks, all those guys, and I wanted to be a YouTube really bad. I didn’t know how to do it, especially back then. I wanted to start when I was younger, 2018 or 2017, but being an influencer, a social media person, wasn’t that common yet. I think it’s more accepted today as TikTok’s grown and all these small social media platforms have blown up.

Once COVID hit in 2020, I didn’t have a lot to do other than school, so I was like, “Okay, let’s give this YouTube thing a try.” I was just making 2K videos by myself in my room. The first kind of viral moment I had was I had my mom rate this YouTube group 2HYPE on a scale of one to 10. They reacted to it, and it got me like 2,000 subscribers. I thought it was like the coolest thing in the world.

But time went on, back to school in person. YouTube is hard to do on your own. I did it on and off at the end of my freshman year of college, and it was just hard. It was demotivating putting so much time into a YouTube video that would get about 500 views. It’s like, “I just spent a week filming that,” and it would just flop. At the time, I was promoting my YouTube videos on TikTok and suddenly, the TikTok started doing really well. I was like, “Why don’t I just focus on TikTok? I can post a video every day, and if it flop,s it’s like, so what? I can just post another one tomorrow.

Eventually, I started doing lacrosse content on there, and it kind of developed into what it is now.

Q: Your mom has been a big part of your videos, especially your earlier videos. What’s it like working with your mom?

A: My mom always liked being in the YouTube videos with me. I started off making lacrosse content because I played lacrosse in college. It was kind of a niche topic. You can only get so far putting out lacrosse content. I kind of maxed it out, getting 30,000 followers off lacrosse content.

My mom always made these YouTube videos with me, and the thing that kind of made us viral originally was that 2HYPE video. So, I was like, why don’t we just do that for TikTok? There was the whole “He’s a 10 but” trend, and I saw someone one day doing this trend with their friend, but they’re describing Darth Vader. I thought, “Okay, what if I do that but with my mom, and I just do famous people?”

I would do the most viral people on the internet at the time, like Adin Ross and iShowSpeed right when they were blowing up. Those videos did insanely well on YouTube Shorts, on TikTok… I also did “siblings or dating” series, where I’d show her photos of famous couples and get her to guess if they’re siblings or dating.

If I didn’t do those videos with my mom, H00pify would not be what it is today. All the credit to my parents in the world. They have supported me no matter what with all this. My mom too, she’s down for any video, she loves being in the videos. If she wasn’t in those videos, I’m not sure I’m where I am right now. The first 100,000 followers on my TikTok were built on me and my mom doing videos together. She’d do most of the stuff, and I’d do the editing. Most people were there to see my mom, not me. All credit to her for that.

Q: A lot of your content is brainrot-focused. Is your mom well-versed in brainrot or do you have to coach her in the brainrot memes?

A: Originally, I knew what would do well. But as time goes on, she gets more involved in the videos, I don’t have to tell her anything. She unfortunately gets caught in this whole web. Me and my cousin would joke around about her because sometimes she would find trends before us. It’s like, “How do you find this meme before me?” She’s pretty well-versed in brainrot now, and it’s 100% my fault. If you’re sending somebody so many TikToks, it’ll make their For You Page like that. She was like, “Why do I care about this? Who is CookieKing?” It’s pretty funny how she’s just kind of in it now.

I keep telling her too, “You need to make your own page, you’d go crazy on here.” She just kind of enjoys doing it. I think maybe down the road, we’ll see that.

@h00pify PUT THE CHICKEN BAKE DOWN @A.J. & Big Justice @BIG JUSTICE #werecostcoguys #chickenbake #bigjustice #ajandbigjustice #costcoverse #henrydetolla #h00pify #detolla ♬ original sound – H00PIFY

Q: What’s the story behind the “Baby Gronk rizzed up Livvy Dunne” meme?

A: I played lacrosse in college, and I remember we had to get up at like 5:30 in the morning. So we were getting up at like 4:30 one day. I was scrolling through my DMs, this was when I had about 70,000 followers on TikTok. I remember scrolling, and I got a DM from Baby Gronk’s dad asking to make a video about his kid. This is kind of when I was shifting from lacrosse content to content with my mom and football content.

So, I was like, “Yeah, sure.” I’d heard of Baby Gronk, but I didn’t really know who he was. I thought it might be good for me, so I started making videos on him. They would do pretty well, they were some of my best videos besides the videos with my mom. Then Baby Gronk goes and meets Livvy Dunne at LSU. He’s texting me, “Hey, I met Livvy Dunne, can you put together a video?” I’m like, “Sure.” This is back when Drip King was hitting up Livvy Dunne, “rizz” was a pretty big word, and I started putting it in my videos, too.

I remember writing this script that was like, “Baby Gronk rizzed her up. Is he the new rizz king?” Cause the Drip King would refer to himself as the rizz king because Livvy Dunne went in his LIVE once. I remember editing the video on the bus heading to a lacrosse game, and I was like, “I don’t even want to post this,” because in the background of the video, the door to my bathroom is wide open. It’s super OCD, but I like having both doors closed when I filmed in that room. I thought people weren’t going to like it because you could see into my bathroom, but like, I was on the road to Albany, New York, for a lacrosse game. I had to post it or I wouldn’t be able to all weekend.

Then I posted it, and it did really well. It got like 700,000 views, and people were commenting on it and whatever. I thought that was it, then two months later, I was at my little sister’s lacrosse game in the middle of nowhere New Hampshire. It’s halftime, and I’m scrolling Twitter, and I’m like, “Why do I see my face everywhere?” That’s when the meme started going viral. People were like, “Livvy Dunne rizzed up Baby Gronk? What is this guy saying? Are any of these words English?

I started thinking that this might be a thing. The next two weeks were kind of crazy. ESPN hit me up like, “Can we use your video for SportsCenter?” It was the SportsCenter before game five of the NBA Finals, and they’re talking about how Baby Gronk rizzed up Livvy Dunne.

Q: Did you expect the video to blow up like that, and what impact did it have on your content going forward?

A: No, I thought it was pretty niche. Like, a lot of football people know Baby Gronk, Livvy Dunne was in her own little bubble. But I kind of pin that as the start of current-day brainrot. That’s when people started wondering what the heck’s going on. Obviously, there were weird memes before, but this current gen of brainrot, I think that was the start, and everything branched out from there.

Honestly, that becoming a meme and brainrot in general transitioned my channel. I was mainly sports and content with my mom, I still do that sometimes, but now I cover a lot of brainrot stuff, too. That never would have happened unless this became brainrot.

Q: Do you find brainrot memes funny in general? What’s your view on them?

A: I find it really funny because it was, at one point, super niche. Sometimes it still is. I’ll laugh at memes that no one knows and that make no sense. Brainrot is more on Reels than TikTok. I’ll scroll Reels sometimes and wonder, “How does this video have so many views?” Like that “Eight Free Pizzas” meme with Brick Heck. That one, my mom couldn’t understand. I would make a video about Eight Free Pizzas, and she’d wonder where that even came from. I’m like, “Yeah, I don’t know why people find this funny, but we do.”

Q: Do people recognize you a lot in public? Any memorable encounters?

A: It’s not one specific moment I guess. I definitely started to get recognized more, especially when me and my mom are together in public, since she’s been in my videos throughout. Usually, I think when people see someone kind of niche in public, it’s kind of hard to be like, “Is that him? Is it not?” Also, I kind of look crazy in my TikToks. I try to play it up a tad. So, if I’m dressed like a normal person in public, people don’t know if it's me. But they always recognize me when I’m with my mom. So people will come up to us a lot in the most random places.

Now that I’m thinking about it, we were in Europe. My family. We were there for a vacation on a random beach in Croatia. This kid comes up to me, he could barely speak English, and he’s like, “Is this you?” He’s on YouTube Shorts. This kid was from Saudi Arabia, and he watched me on YouTube Shorts. That was by far the craziest interaction I’ve had.

Q: How has the shift from the sports community to the brainrot community impacted your growth? Do you prefer the brainrot community?

A: I remember being stuck. I was making sports videos, but everyone covers sports videos. If you’re not literally the first one on [the story] right away, or it’s not niche, it’s super hard to get the video pushed to the public. I remember trying to cover these sports videos, and I wasn’t really having fun with it. They were getting overplayed. It was kind of the same video over and over again.

Then I remember talking with my friends, and they were like, “Why don’t you cover Gail Lewis?” So I kind of took how I made those sports videos and applied it to Gail Lewis? I was like, “She’s the best Walmart employee of all time, she implemented this new strategy, she has the record for most items scanned.” It was funny, and the video did really well. I realized I could lean into this stuff too.

I tried tying it back to sports, too. Like when Big Justince went viral, I was like, “He’s the number one baseball player in the class.” It keeps my original audience but reaches the brainrot audience too. I love the people I’ve met from the brainrot community too. In the lacrosse community, there are so many egos for no reason. The companies think they’re miles ahead of you.

My first viral series on lacrosse, I was covering this $80-$90 lacrosse head. It was my first million-viewed video; I made millions of views on this lacrosse head. I got in contact with the company, showed them my views, and asked if they wanted to work together. They were like, “Yeah, maybe,” they couldn’t even send me a head. I was helping them get all these views.

The people I directly know know I like them, but some brands you try to interact with, and it’s like, geez. They try to be in the creator space, and I think it’s very poorly run.

But going to the brainrot community and meeting them, we had a gathering recently, like I met Cookie King, Vexbolts, Dylan Latham, you’re like, “Are these people really how they are in their videos?” You’d think these guys have big egos but they’re super down to earth, super cool. It was cool meeting people in the same space as me. Nobody was mean. It was a surprise because it was like, 12 of us together, and nobody was like, “I’m better than you.”

@h00pify Could You Strike Out Big Curtis? #bigcurtis #curtisbanks #youthbaseball #classof2033 #bigcurtis🥶 #kidbaseball #kidbaseballplayer #henrydetolla #h00pify #detolla ♬ original sound – H00PIFY

Q: You report on a lot of “characters” in your videos, like Big Curtis. Why do these character-based videos work so well for you?

A: I think it works so well because I find these people, they existed before I found them, and have their own viral videos that they didn’t necessarily think would go viral. Videos of them playing baseball, soccer, some random sport, or some viral moment they had. But nobody is covering it. You’re not going to get ESPN to be like, “How did Big Curtis do in his third game in the season today?” But I’ll do that, I love seeing that.

People are interested in these characters. They see them play, see their viral moments. It’s like, “How did Papa John hit today?” I kind of get them down to 15 or 30 seconds, where the attention span is there. It’s funny seeing how well those videos do.

I’m always skeptical when I put out a video. I never think, “This video’s going to be my best video yet.” You don’t want to get cocky. But the only video I ever knew was going to be a smash hit was the Big Curtis video. I was just hysterically laughing at those clips. They’re just so funny, I was like, “If this doesn’t hit, I’m doing something wrong.”

Q: What’s the process of reporting on these niche characters like?

A: It depends on if the parents are kind of involved. If the parent wants their kid to be an influencer. I remember making my first video on Big Justice and the Costo Guys. The dad [AJ] hit me up, and he was super helpful. Last spring, I made a bunch of videos about them. They have a lot of animations on their videos, and I asked if he’d send the clean files to me, he did right away.

There are some people who you just don’t get in contact with, they don’t really care. Obviously, I’d love more footage on some of these players, like Big Curtis and stuff like that, but sometimes the footage just isn’t there. Like, there’s been comments on my videos for months asking for a Big Curtis update, and it’s like, I just don’t have it for you. I have no way of getting these videos.

@h00pify Would you listen to Coach Chris if he was your Coach? #christopherbess #kidbasketballcoach #chrisbess #highschoolbasketball #highschoolbasketballcoach #henrydetolla #h00pify #detoll ♬ original sound – H00PIFY

Q: What was it like meeting and filming with the Costco Guys?

A: That was so fun. I was in lacrosse, I had a spring schedule. They invited me, and they were like, “Hey, everyone’s coming down.” It was on a random holiday on a Monday. We randomly had it off that day, so I literally flew down, left for New Jersey at like 6:00 in the morning, and flew back at like 5 in the afternoon. It was like, “I gotta meet these guys.” They were at their peak. I was nervous to meet them. Obviously, they present well in their videos, and they couldn’t have been more down-to-earth. AJ is like the nicest guy in the world. All of them, Ashley, Mama Justice, Big Justice, they’re all super nice. Filming those videos together was so funny.

It was cool, because we’d call ourselves “The Costcoverse.” Everyone got together and filmed those videos. It was crazy watching how they work, too. All super nice and funny. Behind the scenes, when we filmed the “put the Chicken Bake down” video, we threw the Chicken Bake up at the end, and it got stuck on the roof of that building. I think that Chicken Bake is still there.

What’s great about them is, no matter who they see, they’re always the happiest people in the world. They’re willing to take as many pictures as people want, as many videos as they want. It was super cool to see that.

Q: What’s up with the voice? Why do you extend the ends of your words like that?

A: What happened with the voice is that my mom dad and cousin came to me around December and said, “What’s going on with your voice in these videos? It’s gotten almost unwatchable.” I was like, “What are you talking about?” I went back and watched a video from June and my voice was pretty normal, then watched a current video and I was like, “What happened?”

I was going through, trying to figure out how it happened. I remember one time, making a video, I needed the clip that the subject sent me to go longer. I couldn’t just say, “Big Justice hit a homerun.” The clip of Big Justice hitting the homerun and me saying “Big Justice hit a homerun” was happening too quickly. So I extended the end of “homerun” to match the length of the clip. I kept doing that, then I just started talking like that naturally.

I didn’t even realize it happened. I realize it now and play into it a little more now but sometimes I needed to do it so the clip would match up. Now it just kind of happens naturally. People think I’m the guy who said, “Number 15 Burger King foot lettuce.”

One time, I uploaded a video without that voice, and someone commented, “Dang bro, you’re not dragging your vowels today, things must be going well in your life. Proud of you.”

@h00pify What group would be able to defeat the Costco Guys? #werecostcoguys #bigjustice #therizzler #sallyslices #webringtheboom #bigaj #ajandbigjustice #batteringram #cousinangelo #henrydetolla #h00pify #detolla ♬ original sound – H00PIFY

Q: Who is your biggest dream collab?

A: I’ll give you a realistic one and one that’s shooting for the stars. Realistically, I want to do a huge colab with Santa Cruz [Medicinals], Cookie King, PowEnvy, all of them. He has this “locked in challenge,” I’ve been pushing to go on one for a while now. Me and Santa Cruz are friends on TikTok, we DM and stuff. I think that would be awesome.

Shooting for the stars collab, I’d love to do something with FaZe Clan. FaZe Banks was probably my biggest inspiration for social media. Where his hometown was, I went to college, I was lowkey hoping to run into him once, but obviously, he lives far away now. I’m super impressed with their whole rebrand, too. When I stopped watching them in 2017 or 2018, they were in a weird spot, but seeing how they rebounded from all that is insane.

I also really want to be a participant in a Mr. Beast video. Now that I’m out of college, I’m going to apply for the next season of Beast Games, see if I can get on there.

Q: What does the future look like for your content? Are you trying to expand in any way?

A: I’ve been thinking about that. The older I get, the weirder the videos get, which might be funny, but I can’t be talking about the number one player in the class of 2060 when I’m 50 years old. It gets to a point where it’s weird. Right now, I’m interning at Barstool Sports as a half-content intern, half-social media intern. Hopefully, I can use this to kind of transition to more, I don’t want to say “normal content,” but I could find a new niche or transition this into something a little bigger, maybe a show or something. A three-minute show about brainrot would be hilarious, kind of like what Keemstar did back in the day, but reworked.

I’ve been posting on my second channel a lot too. I’ve got a spam account going, I think that’s like, the future of content to a degree. Because when I was younger, I’d watch vlogs all the time, but people don’t have the attention span these days to watch a YouTuber vlog for 20 minutes. I think if people are just vlogging their day on their phone and posting it in 20 to 30-second videos, I think that’s the future. But it is a little hard too, I’m the new guy, I can’t be shoving a phone in people’s faces 24/7.

@h00pifyreacts EVERYONE is doing the 41 dance 😭 #41butigot41gold #41 #41meme #jerseyjoe #cousinangelo #tonycash #hooperville #h00pify ♬ 41 Song – Saks Freestyle – Blizzi Boi

Q: Who is on your Mount Rushmore of brainrot?

A: You’ve gotta go Baby Gronk. He was the guy that kind of got it going. I think that video of me saying, “Baby Gronk rizzed up Livvy Dunne” was the start of brainrot, so I’d put him in the first spot. I think you’d have to go Livvy Dunne at two. Then the Rizzler, because he eventually became brainrot too. I think you have to go Big Justice at four. It’s tough, though, because I feel like Baby Gronk and Livvy Dunne are the same thing, and so are the Rizzler and Big Justice. But those are people you look at and think, “That’s brainrot for sure.”

Q: Do you have any advice for aspiring content creators?

A: You don’t have to give up your life to do content creation. I see a lot of people on TikTok like, “I just quit my job, I’m doing this full time. I’ve studied all the videos. I know what I’m doing.” That’s scary, and that’s a lot of pressure. Like, I played lacrosse in college, I was an engineering student, and I did TikTok on the side.

Was it a lot of time, and did I have little free time because of it? Yes, but I knew it was something I wanted to do, something I enjoyed. You can go to school, get a degree, and do videos in your free time. You’ll have less free time than your friends in comparison, but if it’s something you really like, you can do it. You can find time for it, just don’t give up everything for it, too, because that’s scary.

Q: Thank you for talking with us, H00pify. Where can people follow you?

A: You can find me at H00pify on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and my new second channel, H00pifyreacts on TikTok. It’s kind of just me vlogging my daily life, like I do Barstool stuff, or repost memes I find funny. It’s more of me being relatable, not talking in that voice.

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You can follow H00pify on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube @h00pify. You can also follow his second TikTok account @H00pifyreacts.

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