Kirsten Titus didn't start her TikTok account (@pepperonimuffin) with the intention of educating others on what it was like to grow up in Hawaii, but it happened anyway.
"I noticed a lot of people would ask me about Hawaii in general," Kirsten said. "And whenever I would make a video on that, they would perform pretty well."
As her popularity grew, she began receiving more Hawaii-specific questions, so she started making videos about some of her favorite things. For example, poké.
BuzzFeed reached out to 23-year-old Kirsten to find out what it's actually like to grow up in a tropical paradise.
"In Hawaii, pidgin is the slang that everyone uses, so there were a lot of words I was saying, and people would be like, 'What the heck?'" Kirsten explained. For example, the word, "choke," which Kirsten says means "a lot" in pidgin. "So I'd be like, 'Oh there's choke cookies here,' and people would be like, 'What? Who's choking who?'"
2. Sometimes, she explains the differences between major food chains, like Panda Express in Hawaii vs. in the rest of the country.
3. Or that hiking in Hawaii is a very different experience from hiking anywhere else in the US.
4. She also explains that tourists often feel "landlocked" when they visit Hawaii, but she actually experienced the opposite effect when moving to the mainland.
5. Kirsten said "the biggest difference" for her in coming to the mainland to attend school at Brigham Young University was that in Hawaii, Asians were the majority, but that was not the case in Utah. "I always grew up being, like, in the majority, not even thinking anything of it. And then when I moved to Utah, I realized, 'Whoa...there's no people of color around here.'"
6. Her food videos always hit. Like in this one, where she taught everyone how to whip up a typical Hawaiian sweet.
7. Or this one, where she introduced followers to poi mochi, a Hawaiian fried snack.
8. "Plate lunches" are common in Hawaii, Kirsten explains in one post. "There's a bed of rice and then meat on top and then random vegetables."
9. Spam musubi (a slice of spam on a block of rice wrapped in seaweed) is a popular 7-Eleven snack in Hawaii. Kirsten says growing up, Spam musubi was a common field trip lunch.
