This Philly woman went mega-viral by mocking gross cooking TikToks. Like many Black creators, her fame hasn’t been profitable.

Tanara Mallory has 3.4 million TikTok followers. Her videos have been liked more than 58 million times. Her voice has been used to narrate 5,600 other people’s memes.

Yet Mallory says the money she’s made off her virality at best covers “gas and groceries.”

The North Philly resident, 47, is a supermarket production cook by day — she prefers not to say where — and social media star by night. Mallory wryly pokes fun at viral casserole and dessert recipes designed to make viewers gag. Her catchphrase “Everybody’s so creative” has transcended Mallory’s own work; her voice is on the soundtrack of videos that riff on the frustration of watching people make intentional mistakes.

“I’m just sarcastically saying what’s on everyone’s mind,” Mallory said.

Mallory mocks recipes intended to fail — finished products featuring spheres of raw hamburger meat and trays of crunchy pasta — allowing her to build a brand that cuts through the tension of the internet, where discourse around something as simple as how to cook chili for your neighbors can turn incendiary.

Mallory’s situation is all too common for Black social media creators, who have shaped internet culture for decades. Many recent trends can be traced to Black creators — the “Renegade” dance, our overuse of the word “slay”, and Aliyah-core Y2K miniskirts, to name a few — yet these originators seldom receive credit or financial gain.

Converting internet clout to cash leaves some Black creators scrambling for recognition, leading many down a rabbit hole of unenforceable legal advice.

“Everyone is telling me I need an agent, I need brand deals, I need this or that, but I don’t want to feel like I owe people before I even see money,” Mallory said.

Mallory films each of her viral creations in one shot; she’s still learning how to edit. The mother of three daughters recently started reposting her content to YouTube, where she gained more than 200,000 subscribers in a little more than three months, but Mallory wouldn’t call herself tech-savvy: “I didn’t know what a URL was when I first started.”

Her brand has just begun to turn lucrative: Mallory is a member of TikTok’s Creator Fund, which pays cents on the dollar for posting videos on the app, makes batches of Cameos for $50 apiece, and is working on a merchandise line with students at Rowan University.

But Mallory’s returns pale in comparison with creators who have been able to turn their viral personas into tangible commodities, from book deals to coffee brands.

“If I stay dependent on things like the Creator Fund, I will never be able to leave my full-time job,” she said.

The advice given to Black creators looking to protect and monetize their work boils down to this: Copyright or trademark your material, even if it’s unclear what that means.

Calls for Black creatives to license their work came after 2021′s Black TikTok Strike, when prominent Black choreographers stopped creating viral dances after seeing white influencers, such as Charli D’Amelio and Addison Rae, earn once-in-a-lifetime opportunities from routines they didn’t make.

“I think I could have gotten money for it, promos for it. ... I don’t think any of that stuff has happened for me because no one knows I made the dance,” Jalaiah Harmon, the creator of the “Renegade,” told the New York Times as she watched D’Amelio’s net worth soar to $20 million off the back of her dance.

TikTok has faced accusations of intentionally suppressing the work of Black creators, leaving them to decide between leaving the app entirely, or spending time policing how people use their work.

After she watched a YouTube channel post her videos without permission, Mallory is choosing the latter.

“Normally, I just laugh at it,” Mallory said. “But it does bother me when people take my videos and post them as if it’s their show.”

Mallory is looking to trademark four of her catchphrases — including “Everybody’s so creative” and “We don’t do that in Philly” — before launching her merch line, but the lawyer she was working with hadn’t started on the process as of late March. Mallory had to drop him.

“There are times when I get a little overwhelmed. I just don’t know the ins and outs of things like this yet,” she said.

For those with the means to pursue licensing, the process doesn’t get clearer.

To establish a copyright for something as ephemeral as a TikTok dance or meme, you need three things, according Cynthia Dahl, the director of the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law’s Detkin Intellectual Property & Technology Legal Clinic: originality, a record fixed in a time, and the specific expression of an idea, such as a version of a knock-knock joke but not the format itself.

Registering a copyright lets creators “control what other people do with their content,” said Dahl, which can mean licensing work for use in other media — or going after those who copy, but don’t credit, their work.

Getting even that far is difficult: Fresh Prince of Bel-Air actor Alfonso Ribeiro attempted to register his beloved Carlton Dance after Epic Games added it to the video game Fortnight Battle Royale, but the U.S. Copyright Office blocked his request, claiming the dance lacked complexity.

And at least 20% of participants in a program from tech company Logitech aimed at providing Black choreographers legal protections for their work — including creator of the “Savage” TikTok dance Keara Wilson — don’t know the status of their copyright, The Inquirer has learned.

Policing a copyright once it’s registered is also nebulous, said David Hecht, a New York-based lawyer working with choreographer Kyle Hanagami on an appeal against Epic Games after they excerpted a portion of his work in Fortnite.

Hecht, who also represents Ribeiro, said he’s seen “next to no enforcement” from social media creators. Issuing takedown requests for every uncredited video is time consuming, and taking violators to court can cost thousands in legal fees.

“If it’s a bunch of copycats who aren’t making money themselves, is the juice worth the squeeze?” said Hecht.

Mallory is committed to taking ownership of her work.

First up: a line of apparel, tote bags, and aprons produced by students in a Rowan’s University entrepreneurial learning lab taught by professor Jenny Drumgoole. Mallory is among the class’s first clients.

“I want her to explode and make as much as she can. … I think she’s a genius,” said Drumgoole.

From there, Drumgoole’s 12 students designed merchandise for Mallory, including a set of cartoonish logos; built a website; and shot a set of visuals for Mallory to use as she pursues advertising opportunities.

Now, Drumgoole says her students are attempting to file trademark registrations for Mallory. “I want my students to be the go-tos when Tanara is rich and famous,” Drumgoole mused.

As for Mallory, she’s certain her comedy will translate into literal currency.

“My goal is to become a full-time influencer,” she said. “I’m always trying to make everybody laugh.”