Despite living in an evacuation zone, Alexander Haake did not leave his home in the St. Petersburg region before Hurricane Ian. “Her mother was at work the day before the evacuation was announced. She was a little too late,” Haake, 16, said by phone. “Interstate 4 has a lot of traffic, so I crouched down.”
On Tuesday, high school student Haake TikTok video A picture of a computer screen showing Ian’s projected path across Florida. In the video, Mr. Haake said, hovering over the west coast of the state, “Okay, okay, I live there. I’m using my mouse.” “Give me 1,000 followers and I’ll go live during the hurricane.” If this goal is met, Haake claimed he’ll run naked outside during the hurricane.
He got what he wanted—and some. Haake estimated he had about 150 followers when he posted the video on Tuesday. (The app requires users to have at least 1,000 to use the live-streaming feature.) By Thursday, he had amassed his 25,000-plus. “Of course I didn’t mean to,” Haake said, referring to going outside naked. “I didn’t mean to do that. It was a joke.”
He ended up going live on TikTok, fully clothed, just as Ian landed around him. “It was windy and raining. I was standing outside my garage.” On his TikTok Live he streamed for nearly four hours. At one point, he said, as many as 20,000 people were watching him. Viewers could see the trees in Haake’s neighborhood blow sideways dramatically. “We’re getting a lot of viewers because people like this,” Haake said during the broadcast.