Guy who made appeal for more friends on TikTok ends up with dozens

‘Universe sort of echoes back at you,’ he says after millions of people watch the video

Brently and his friend Jeffrey who shared the video on TikTok announcing they’re looking to make new friends (Screengrab/TikTok)

It’s a wish come true for a young man who asked for more friends to hang out with him in a TikTok video that went viral with millions of views.

Just weeks after 23-year-old TikToker user called Brently and his pal Jeffrey made a sincere appeal asking for more friends to hang out with, the duo ended up making more than a dozen and organised a meet up for them at a local park.

Brent Gogan, who goes by the pseudonym Brently on TikTok, shared the initial video announcing that those living in the vicinity of Moncton, in the Canadian province of New Brunswick, can hang out with them if they wanted to make some new friends.

"Hi, do you live in the Moncton, NB, area and are looking for more friends?" he asked in the video.

"Well, I’ve got good news for you cuz we got two of ‘em right here. Yeah, We’re pretty cool guys, we like hanging out and this park here, we’re really into movies, video games ... We’d really like to be your friend cuz it’s just the two of us now. It’d be awesome to get a third person or a fourth or a fifth."

The earnest plea went viral on Twitter after someone captioned the video: “this is the most depressing s**t I’ve ever seen.”

The tweet was called out by several Twitter users who rallied behind Brently and said that it was an example of “normal people using the internet.”

“F**k you. this is perhaps the best example of wholesome, normal people using the internet to try to form genuine connections I’ve seen in at least a decade. I hate so much that atomized, neoliberal ideology has flagged having normal friendships as ‘depressing,’” said a user.

The view count climbed within days both on Tiktok with a million views, and on Twitter with another two million and counting.

After the overwhelming response, the duo organised a meet-up with around 30 people showing up at a park.

He called it “the greatest day of my life” in another video he shared adding that he was surprised to see people getting out of their cars and bike one after another.

“I went and sat at this bench with Jeffrey and we brought the cooler over, and one by one, all these people started showing up,” he said.

“Some people on bikes, some people just walking up, some people getting out of their cars, and I was so amazed, so surprised that all of these people were coming there to hang out with me and Jeffrey. It was this rush of dopamine that I’d never had before. All these people there to be my friend,” he said.

He told CBC news that he thinks the “universe sort of echoes back at you” and what you wish comes back to you. He said he would want to organise regular meet-ups going forward.

He also spoke about his friend Jeffrey, who silently stood with him in the videos, saying: “Like after my mother died a lot of my friends were saying that I was too depressing to be around. Jeffrey was the only one that really stuck by me.”