TikTok’s Peach PRC Treats The Internet Like Her Private Diary

When Peach PRC jumps onto our Zoom call, I get to see the inside of her bedroom. She’s sitting on a giant pink blob that looks like a blown-up bubblegum bubble. Behind her, the walls are covered in grungey Tumblr-esque collages, tinged with fairycore pastels.

You’d expect that seeing where someone sleeps might be a bit of an intimate experience, but it wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen before. You see, the 24-year-old musician and TikToker regularly shares the most personal ins and outs of her life with her 1.5 million followers.

Like many of her fans, I discovered Peach PRC through her meandering and entertaining 'story times' that landed on my For You page. Her chaotic accounts of her time working as a stripper and her willingness to share the realities of living with mental health illnesses quickly pivoted her to TikTok stardom.

Hailing from Adelaide, Peach PRC had never really intended to get into TikTok until her little sister encouraged her to get the app. A homage to Princess Peach, her TikTok handle was borrowed from her stripper name.

“I used to make TikToks and screen-record them and send them just to my sister and my friends. I wouldn't post them, I'd be like, ‘here's a video I made,’” she tells Refinery29 Australia. “After a while, they were kind of getting sick of getting sent random TikToks that I'd made all the time. So I just started posting them. But I didn't tell anyone about it till way later on.”

When Peach PRC hit the 11,000 follower milestone back in February 2019, she was chuffed enough to want to share the news with her friends on Instagram, but not comfortable enough to share her username, scribbling over it so no one would find it. Eventually though, the numbers grew to a point where she couldn’t control people finding out.

“At that point I was just like, ‘ok well, there's already a few people that want to see what I'm posting so I might as well go for it and not worry about who's gonna see it and what people are gonna think and say,’” she explains. 

I’m surprised at her wariness and resistance to being public, given her TMI approach to candid storytelling is what people love about her. From the outside, it looks like nothing is off limits for Peach PRC, but the reality is a little more nuanced.

After gaining popularity from her comedic videos, she found herself with an audience for her music. She didn’t fall down the young-person-becomes-famous-so-they-release-music pipeline that we see many famous TikTokers waltz into; Peach PRC had always had a soft spot for music. She told Rolling Stone that songwriting had been an important vessel for self-expression in her teen years, and her Internet presence attests to that too — her Soundcloud has evidence of her 16-year-old songwriting self.

While Peach PRC's speed-talking Tiktoks and melodic songs feel like they shouldn’t have too much overlap, they do. Both act like a private diary and portal into her life (as an example, her song 'Josh' serves as the ultimate post-relationship fuck you to her ex, Josh).

But not all of her life experiences can be whittled down to a catchy technicolour pop song. Peach PRC has been unflinchingly honest about her mental health struggles. “Especially when I started, it kind of was my whole life, like all I was dealing with was just these overwhelming mental health issues,” she says. "The only way to get through it is to just laugh through it honestly. And then I guess that really resonated with a lot of people.”

In recent weeks, TikTok has become home to her journey of sobriety. “I’m feeling sad because I don’t want to drink but I can’t stop,” she tearfully tells her audience. “I can’t even go [one] day without wanting to drink and I always feel like shit.” 

Thousands of commenters leapt to support Peach PRC, and from then on she began to document her days trying to stay sober. I’m speaking to her on her sober day five, an impressive feat that I congratulate her on, and that she sheepishly but proudly acknowledges. 

“It has been really scary,” she confesses. “I don't know if I will end up drinking again, and there’s a chance I will — a part of recovery is relapsing. And if that happens, I hope that I'm still met with the same support and positivity that I have been. It is scary but it also helps me keep myself accountable.”

And that night, Peach PRC did end up drinking, breaking her five-day streak. But her wish for support from her audience came true. “Sobriety is not linear. It has set backs [sic], it has relapses. It’s okay,” read one comment. “Took me five years of performing to be able to do it sober. You’re doing amazing x,” wrote musician Kira Puru. 

I ask Peach PRC what she is proudest of. She replies, “Maybe my perseverance to keep going with what I've done and not get embarrassed by sharing myself and being vulnerable. Even though I haven't always been met with positivity and warmth, I’m really proud that I'm now here.”