Known as “emo ukulele girl” on TikTok, a.k.a. mxmtoon, 18-year-old Oaklander Maia never expected to have a music career.

“Oh, it definitely happened by accident,” she said. “Up until last year around April, I was about to graduate high school, and I was going to go study architecture.”

But then mxmtoon went viral online, and her pipe dream of having a music career started to become feasible. Her ukulele-driven, stripped-back songs with relatable lyrics — but also her self-deprecating sense of humor — found an audience where she didn’t expect it.

Mxmtoon had been making content on the internet since middle school, from YouTube (where she posted original songs, advice videos, and family-vacation montages) to the now-defunct Vine. But it wasn’t until she discovered TikTok that her videos started taking off, and she now has over 900,000 fans.

“I made an account one day, and I found myself scrolling through videos for hours because they were so funny and reminded me a lot of Vine,” said mxmtoon. “It was kind of my redemption arc of trying to get internet clout on an app. I never had a huge following on Vine, but with TikTok, I thought I could try again.”

If you’re feeling old right now and are not sure what the teens are talking about, TikTok (formerly known as Musical.ly) is a social media app that lets users share 15-second lip-synch or comedy videos. Users can select from a database of songs, effects, and sound bites, meaning a lot of the content manifests as funny mini-music videos. Collaboration is highly encouraged — TikTok users can duet with other users in a split-screen format by simply replying to their video.

“Imagine a version of Facebook that was able to fill your feed before you’d friended a single person. That’s TikTok,” wrote the New York Times’ John Herrman. “Users looking for something to post about are immediately recruited into group challenges or hashtags, or shown popular songs. The bar is low. The stakes are low. Large audiences feel within reach, and smaller ones are easy to find, even if you’re just messing around.”

It’s incredibly popular with young people, particularly Gen Zers. A few Bay Area high school students told me they have the app and enjoy watching the videos but don’t make them personally. There’s a bit of an embarrassment factor to the app, and even some 16-year-olds seem to feel too old for it.

“It’s kind of cringey. I wouldn’t say it’s cool, but everyone is on it,” said high school junior Mila King. “Middle-schoolers are actually like, ‘This is cool.’ High schoolers are like, ‘This is stupid, but I’m still gonna do it,’” said Alex Ikuma, another high school junior.

One of mxmtoon’s recent TikToks is a video of her bashfully glancing at a garbage bin on BART that’s captioned “celebrity sighting!!! kinda nervous 😳” to the tune of Rihanna’s “Pon de Replay.” In another, she does a “TikTok dance” to Minecraft sound effects; another shows her in split-screen mode with another TikTok user, the two of them awkwardly making last-minute adjustments to their prom outfits and waving nervously to each other, set to mxmtoon’s song “prom dress.” (“prom dress” has been featured in over 100,000 TikTok videos, probably partly due to its memeable lyrics: “I’m sitting here, crying in my prom dress / I’d be the prom queen if crying was a contest.)

TikTok is built less on interacting with people whom you know in real life and more on jumping between global audiences with each trend. As Ikuma explained, “One of my friends could be TikTok famous, and I wouldn’t know.”

In the intro to mxmtoon’s music video for “prom dress,” two teenage boys slouch against lockers in a high school hallway. One scrolls through TikTok, then notices that the girl in the video he is watching is opening her locker just across the hallway from him. He nudges his friend and whispers, “It’s her.” The boys stare at her and make awkward eye contact, and mxmtoon slams her locker, scurrying away. According to mxmtoon, this scene was based on real life. Filming the video at a high school prom in San Francisco, she heard someone behind her exclaim, “Oh my God, I think I follow her on TikTok.”

“We thought it would be really funny in the music video to incorporate that moment,” said mxmtoon. “I’m not in school anymore, but if I had some sort of internet following while I was in high school and I was still making these really dramatic videos, I feel like it would’ve played out really similarly to the way the intro clip did.”

A singer-songwriter fresh in her career, mxmtoon is new to touring, but at the live shows she has played so far, she’s noticed TikTok follows her onstage too. Fans shout out references to obscure videos and urge her to do TikTok dances, and usually, she indulges.

mxmtoon is releasing her debut album, called “the masquerade,” on September 17. What was originally intended to be a gap year before college has turned indefinite. She’s chosen instead to pursue music full-time. She’s also embarking on a several-months-long tour this fall, starting in Portland, Oregon, and finishing in London.

“I’ve only been doing this for what’s coming around to be a year and probably only believed that I could for a year as well,” said mxmtoon. It’s been a whirlwind. What started out as an outlet to “flex [her] creative muscles” has transformed into a viral phenomenon that she can make professional.

But do you have to be funny online to have a music career these days? Well, it doesn’t hurt.

“Social media has made it really easy for me to express who I am and then connect with the people who find my music or my content somewhere,” said mxmtoon.

From doing TikTok dances onstage to crooning sincerely online, ukulele in hand, mxmtoon may have stumbled upon her success by accident, but she sure looks like a natural.