How Bethel Graduate TJ Therrien ’07 turned birth order into comedy gold

“It doesn’t matter if I post a video and it gets 10 million views or I create a funny little 15-second video just to show my mom to make her giggle. Those make me equally happy,” says TJ Therrien ’07. And it’s making millions of others happy, too. As a full-time social media personality, TJ creates relatable short videos that mostly poke fun at birth-order quirks—think type-A firstborn, free-spirited second born, and strong-willed third born. By the end of one of his videos, you’re laughing because either you see yourself as one of them or you see your own children in them. 

“Laughing is healing, and I love to help produce that kind of emotion,” TJ says. “I feel like I was born with this unique ability and desire to entertain people, and I love seeing the joy that comes on the other side of that.” 

That joy has become widespread. He now has about three million followers across all of social media, with anywhere between 30 and 80 million people watching his videos over the course of a month. 

Take one

During Covid, the connection and relatability of TJ’s videos became apparent. With too much time on his hands and a little boredom, he started creating funny sketches with his kids and posting them on TikTok. “I quickly started hearing from parents all over the country—really all over the world,” says TJ. “They’d say ‘oh my gosh, this is so accurate,’ or ‘Uh, my kids are the same!’ And, so I ran with it just because it was fun. And it seems like all parents are living very similar lives.”

His own parents are included in this, too. “I was a typical middle child. Like, I slept with an ice cream bucket on my head some nights. I was always trying to put on a show. I was the reason our family was late for church every Sunday. All I wanted to eat was pizza,” says TJ. Now a parent to four, ranging from preschool to seventh grade, he can clearly see the birth-order tendencies in his son and three daughters. 

“Early on, we saw that my oldest loved organizing and being on time. If the bus came at 9 in the morning, he would run his backpack out at 7 a.m. just so that he could be the first one in line for the bus—he loved being on time that much,” TJ shares. “Our second born was the opposite, dropping crumbs everywhere she went. Then the youngest comes along and is like, ‘Okay, this is my opportunity to set things straight—we’re gonna play by my rules.’” 

TJ is careful to note that the laughter created by his sketches isn’t meant to be done at the expense of others. His intent has never been to mock or disparage. “That's really important to me. I never want anyone to feel like I'm making fun of them. Rather, I’m celebrating these unique quirks,” he says. 

Quirks like how your kid eats a sandwich. “The oldest child sits down and eats the sandwich nicely and neatly over the plate. The middle just rips it apart and ends up having peanut butter all over her face, while the youngest is given a sandwich on a blue plate but slides it back to mom because she wants the red plate,” he says.

From the top

TJ started college at Minnesota State University, Mankato, to play baseball. A couple years in, he began questioning his priorities. “What do I want to do with my life? What’s important to me? And that’s when I started to take my faith so much more seriously,” he says. “My mom had worked at Bethel for a time and ironically my girlfriend at the time said she was transferring to Bethel. I said, ‘yeah, me too.’"

So, TJ started his junior year at Bethel—playing baseball and taking media communications courses. “The coolest thing was going from this gigantic public state school to what felt like a real family at Bethel,” he says. “And playing baseball, I had 30 instantaneous friends.” For him, those relationships have been life-changing and longstanding. His girlfriend who he transferred to Bethel with became his wife, and his friends then are still his friends now. “I still have a text thread with eight friends from Bethel—20 years later—which is really cool. It’s a testament to the culture Bethel creates,” TJ says. 

The relationships he made with his professors are also memorable. “I was held accountable in a good way. It’s what I needed,” TJ says. “I felt like the professors cared about me, which blew my mind as a transfer student coming from a big school."

Although he says he changed his major 1,500 times—he is, after all, a middle child—he graduated with a marketing major and media communications minor. “The beautiful thing is Bethel helped me develop as an adult, as a Christ-follower, and as a student, and that led me to my next step,” he says. After graduating, he landed a job at Twin Cities-based Eagle Brook, church to an estimated 51,000 people across 14 physical sites, an online community, and numerous viewing groups. There he would stay for the next 14 years in various creative roles, leading the church’s creative team and helping stream their services.

Rolling 

About two years ago TJ stepped down from his role at Eagle Brook to become a full-time content creator. “In my 20s, I thought I would have to move to L.A. or to New York to get a unique, creative job. But then God opened the door for me to use my gifts at a church. And now He’s opened a door to work for myself and try to build something on social media,” says TJ.

He knows social media gets many knocks, and often rightly so, but he believes there are many positives. “It really connects the world. You can use it for good, and you can build so many great skills being on social media, whether it's through writing, graphic design, creating videos, or just being yourself, being authentic and sharing your points of view,” he says. “It’s an amazing thing for kids to experiment with at the right age, with the right oversight. I'm learning that with so many people's attention turning from TV to social media, there's going to be even more opportunity to build careers there.” 

So, for now, that’s where you’ll find him—@tj_therrien on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook—making you laugh. 

“I’ve been doing funny comedy sketch videos my whole life,” he says. “It’s my favorite thing to do.”

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