Sorority recruitment at the University of Alabama, better known as "Bama Rush," has become a viral and trending cultural moment, with thousands watching to see which houses incoming white freshmen students join.
It’s a week defined by carefully coordinated Southern outfits, whirlwind conversations, and now, millions of TikTok views. While rush has always been a high-stakes tradition in the South, the social media age has turned it into a viral spectacle.
Videos from the University of Alabama's sorority rush week went viral on TikTok in 2021. The #bamarush and #alabamarush hashtags on TikTok have attracted millions of views during the past few years and continue to do so.
"It's emotional boot camp. It's psychological warfare," Brandis Bradley, a sorority coach, told PEOPLE of the process of primary recruitment. "And their frontal lobes aren't even fully developed."
For two members of Zeta Tau Alpha — senior Kylan Darnell and junior Kaiden Kilpatrick — the reality of Greek life is personal and powerful after the two women harnessed social media to attract thousands of viewers to their pages.
Darnell didn’t grow up with Southern sorority culture. The reigning Miss Ohio Teen USA at the time, she arrived at Alabama from a small town with little knowledge of what rush even entailed.
"I was the first person from my high school to go to Alabama," Darnell told Fox News Digital. "I had no idea about the culture, and honestly, I felt clueless. When I got to orientation and other girls started talking about rush, I had to ask, 'What is that?'"
That same night, she got her first real taste of what sorority life looked like when a group of girls and their mothers took her down Sorority Row. She was instantly hooked.
"I called my mom and said, 'Mother, I have to try to be in a sorority,'" she recalled. "But my parents weren’t on board at first. My mom said no. My dad said, 'We’re not paying for friends.'"
"He told me, 'You’re the most outgoing girl we know, you’ll be fine without it.' But I kept pushing. Daddy listened to his little princess," she added with a laugh. "Eventually, I talked them into it."
A spontaneous TikTok she made on the first day of recruitment, originally sent to her family’s text message group chat to explain the process to her family, went viral while she was still in orientation. Within hours, her life changed.
"That first video was supposed to be a video diary for my family," she said. "But I posted it on TikTok, and when I came back from convocation, my phone had blown up. I couldn’t believe it."
Her audience grew overnight.
"After that, my life completely changed," she said. "I became financially independent and was able to pay for the rest of college through TikTok. It launched my platform, and gave me a voice."
But that platform came with a price. Darnell, now with 1.2 million followers and over 82 million likes, said the scrutiny became overwhelming.
"It’s been fun and I wouldn’t trade it, but it’s also been really hard to navigate college while being under a microscope," she said. "People forget that we’re real people."
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