Molly Thompson goes by many different names on TikTok: Guac Girl, Guacamolly, Bev Cart Girl and Molly Faye.
A second-year international business major from Houston, Texas, Thompson started posting on social media in sixth grade on Musical.ly, a short-form video app launched in 2014. When Musical.ly merged with TikTok in 2018, Thompson transitioned her content from lip syncing to rant videos, in which she would talk to her camera about her opinions on topics like school and politics.
Since then, her TikTok account @guacamolly.com has amassed over 1.4 million followers and 112.3 million likes. Over the course of nine years, Thompson has reinvented her content style time and time again by experimenting with editing styles and starting new series.
Thompson’s rise to fame was gradual. Rather than going viral from one specific video, she started to slowly gain traction on her profile when she began posting more frequently in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.
“I was posting a bunch of videos per day,” Thompson said. “They weren’t super highly edited or thought out, but when you’re posting that much, even if none of them are blowing up, you’re still getting on people’s timelines and feeds.”
For a while, she kept her profile a secret. Her family was completely unaware of her online presence until one of her parents’ friends told them that their daughter had seen one of Thompson’s videos on her feed. By that point, Thompson’s account had over 300,000 followers.
“They were definitely in shock, and just kind of confused,” Thompson said, laughing. “I mean, when you think of someone who’s like 50 or 60 hearing that their daughter has however many hundred thousands of followers, they’re like, ‘What?’ That number is kind of unfathomable.”
As her account grew, Thompson continued to regularly post several videos per day until June 2021, the start of her nearly two-year posting hiatus.
“I remember that particular week I had several videos do crazy numbers in a row. It was like millions and millions of views, and it was just a lot,” Thompson said. “I was like, maybe I should take a week off just to reset. And then a week turned to two weeks, which turned into two months, which turned into [two] years.”
In June 2023, she returned to TikTok to post a transition video of her in a cap and gown on her high school graduation day. Thompson said she was apprehensive to start posting again because she thought her views might drastically drop after a long posting break. So, she was surprised when her first few return videos received a lot of attention and people recognized her from her previous videos.
Since then, Thompson’s page has evolved to primarily feature lifestyle videos like “get-ready-with-me”s and day-in-the-life vlogs. Thompson said she is much happier with the content she is producing now and that continuing with rant videos would feel inauthentic.
“People still perceive me as that 15 year old,” Thompson said. “I would say there are bits of her that I still have within me, but I wouldn’t say we’re the same person at all … I feel that social media does not have enough authenticity, especially right now. I would say in 2020, it was a lot more prevalent, but for me to keep posting the content I was, that wouldn’t feel true to who I am, and I think I would have burned out had I tried to.”
In the summer of 2024, Thompson started posting videos of her summer job at a golf course, which started a series she would later become known for. Each video consistently received several million views, with one even reaching 15.1 million views, Thompson became informally known as “Bev cart girl” and frequently gets recognized around her hometown and Northeastern’s campus.
“I got screamed at in [International Village] dining hall once. Someone screamed ‘Bev cart girl!’” Thompson said. “It wasn’t in a respectful way, either; they were definitely making fun of me. But it’s super funny. It’s all lighthearted at the end of the day.”
During her first semester at Northeastern, Thompson studied abroad in N.U.in Portugal, where she met her boyfriend Dominic Rusu, a second-year business administration major. While Rusu does not use TikTok, he has been featured in some of Thompson’s videos and said that he has gotten recognized from it.
“This girl stops me and she’s like, ‘Wait, I’ve seen you on TikTok before,’” Rusu said. “I’m like, ‘No, I don’t think so.’ I don’t post or anything. And then she’s like, ‘Oh, you’re this girl’s boyfriend.’”
Rusu said the girl then asked to take a photo with him, which he was surprised by. He said that while Thompson posts a lot of day-in-the-life videos, she likes to keep her personal life mostly private.
As she has gotten older, Thompson said she is working on setting boundaries in her life to help keep her real life friendships detached from her online content, and when it comes to criticism, she does her best to try and let it roll off of her back.
“I actually have comment filters on just because, yes, everyone can say whatever they please, but that doesn’t mean I need to see it,” Thompson said. “So I don’t even know what gets said and where. I remember there was a time frame during rush season for sorority, Yik Yak was apparently tearing me to shreds. I saw one post and I deleted the app. I was like, ‘I don’t need this right now.’”
Thompson sees TikTok as an added benefit to her life, not the main focus of it. She said that while she appreciates all of the opportunities social media has given her, such as brand trips and PR packages, she is hesitant to become a full-time influencer.
“My family is very dead set on college, job, or at least minimum college,” Thompson said. “I also agree. I feel like you need a degree regardless … As long as I get that degree, I feel like I’m set, and if something happens to socials in the future, I can always fall back on that.”
Currently in San Francisco for co-op, Thompson is balancing two full-time jobs at once. As she navigates a new environment, her content continues to adapt with her.
Aaron Yeung, a second-year business administration major and a fellow content creator — widely known by his online handle “ADrizzy” — said he admires the way Thompson plans out her videos and continues to consistently push out content despite her constantly changing environment.
Yeung said Thompson is very discreet about filming, and she does not let it disrupt her plans during the day. He said that he often does not even notice that she is filming when they are hanging out.
“You hang out with her and you better have a freaking plan or else it’s not gonna flow,” Yeung said. “She’s very time-oriented, like if you don’t have something to do in every single time-block, you’re wasting your time.”
Yeung said that the keys to Thompson’s success are her organizational skills, her authenticity and her consistency. Despite her busy schedule, Thompson said she will sometimes spend hours editing one video or keep her camera filming for hours on the off-chance that she captures a funny comment. Thompson plans her content on a month by month basis and said she hopes to continue innovating and experimenting with her videos as the years go on.
“I enjoy making content just in itself,” Thompson said. “As long as I’m doing that, I’m happy.”
