TikTok has some really great benefits, including making it easier for us to discover new talents from around the world. Unfortunately, in the wrong hands, TikTok can be a blunt instrument people use to make the lives of others worse.
This is something that the conjoined twins Carmen and Lupita Andrade know all about. Recently, these two TikTokers were made the unwilling part of an explainer video about the conjoined Hensel twins. They put the other party on blast, but this left many people trying to figure out how all of this drama went down in the first place.
Are you one of them? Don’t worry…you can keep reading to discover all about this latest TikTok drama, including the key players and the instant fallout!
An innocent wedding announcement
In many ways, this whole thing started with an entirely different set of conjoined twins. Recently, Abby Hensel revealed that she had gotten married back in 2021. Since Abby is a conjoined twin to her sister Brittany, news of the marriage drove a spotlight on these twins and their unique biology.
While they aren’t exactly household names, the Hensel twins became famous back in the ‘90s thanks to an appearance on Oprah. This led to a brief window of fame that included their own TLC show. These days, those twins are leading mostly normal lives, and they became an unwitting part of some unexpected TikTok drama.
How the drama started
When the news about one of the Hensel twins getting married broke, it led to countless online videos about these unconventional sisters and their equally unconventional biology. Many such content creators are on TikTok, which is also the preferred social media platform for the young conjoined twins Carmen and Lupita Andrade.
They kept getting tagged and referenced in these videos about conjoined twins. Eventually, they took to the platform to voice their displeasure.
A quick biology lesson
In order to properly call out the people tagging them on TikTok, the Andrade twins had to teach a very basic biology lesson to users of the platform. The crux of that lesson is simple: that not all conjoined twins are joined in the same way, and no two sets of conjoined biology are completely similar.
Because of that, these younger twins maintain that it makes no real sense to compare their bodies to those of the Hensel twins. “We share a bloodstream like that,” Carmen Andrade explained before emphasizing that other conjoined twins like the Hensels “may not.”
Sticking up for privacy and decency
While it’s sad that they had to explain this to their followers, the Andrade twins went on to explain their need to protect the privacy of others. Like anyone else, they admitted to having curiosity about others, and they were naturally curious about other conjoined twins such as the Hansels. Regarding their curiosity, however, Carmen cheekily noted “At least I’m not a weirdo about it.”
In other words, the Andrade twins felt like many people were being weird regarding the Hensel twins and using the Andreades to do it. These younger twins preached the need for privacy and emphasized that they didn’t want anyone trying to pry into the Hensel’s lives. As for their own lives, they have always maintained they want to create content that goes far beyond the fact that they are conjoined.
Calling out online exploitation
You can probably tell that the Andrade twins are very clearheaded about the online ecosystem and their place in it. Because of that, they weren’t afraid to put a name on the kind of behavior they have been seeing with the people tagging them and using their content to create content about conjoined twins. According to Carmen, most of the videos they are talking about are nominally “trying to feel informative or education” but instead “mostly just feel cheap and a bit exploitative.”
It’s hard not to see exactly what they are talking about after you watch a few of the videos. Nominally, the content creators who are referencing the Andrades are doing so in order to center their discussions of conjoins twins around those who are actually affected by it. But considering all the generalizations these creators are throwing around, it’s clear that most of them are just chasing clicks and their own personal fame.
Their own chance for reality television?
Considering how the Andrade twins got involved in these discussions about the Hensels, many are wondering just how parallel these twins’ lives may be. For example, the Hensels parlayed their fame into a TLC reality show. Considering that the Andrade twins are online stars in their own right, some fans have wondered if they might get a reality show of their own.
Based on the Andrades’ online comments, that’s not going to happen anytime soon. In chastizing the people tagging them online, Lupita noted how it feels like these people are “like TLC.” Her tone makes it clear she considers the network’s portrayal of the Hensels as exploitative, and these twins would rather build a career online and far away from the cable networks that transformed the Hensels’ lives forever.