The Hype House. The Sway House. The Clubhouse. The Not a Content House. If the rise of TikTok collab houses in late 2019 and early 2020 seemed swift, it’s because it was. Hype House co-founders Chase Hudson and Thomas Petrou even said that going from initial idea to signing a lease took just 13 days.

Even though these collab houses — homes where influencers, usually teenaged or twentysomething, live and create content together — seem novel, the concept of making physicals hubs for creatives to work together isn’t. The first collaborative social media house, The Station, was founded in July 2009 by a collective of early YouTubers including Shane Dawson, Phil De Franco, LisaNova and iJustine. Working out of various homes in Venice Beach, California, the group put together sketch comedy videos and quickly became the second most-watched web series on YouTube. Along with other channels under the umbrella network Maker Studios, the channel was bought by Disney for $500 million in 2014.

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YouTubers and influencers continued the trend throughout the 2010s. Vlogger group Our2ndLife — colloquially known as O2L — took off in 2012 when Connor Franta, Kian Lawley, Trevi Moran, Justin Caylen, Ricky Dillon and Sam Pottorff moved into a house in Encino, California, to create content as a group. That same year, YouTuber FaZe Banks created the FaZe Clan house for gamers to live and work. He later went on to create the Clout House, which very publicly feuded with Jake Paul’s Team 10 house. In 2015, talent from the short video app and TikTok precursor Vine (including the Paul brothers) moved into a 550-unit Los Angeles apartment complex — aptly located at 1600 Vine Street — to collaborate with one another. Even some tech entrepreneurs began living together in the early 2010s. All of these groups have since disbanded — or, in the case of Paul’s Team 10, have promised “a new team coming soon” after all members but him left.

Even most major American TikTok houses have disbanded since their inception in late 2019 and early 2020. The Girls in the Valley House stopped before it even started. The Clubhouse and its offshoots have continued, but original members have left. The adjoining Not a Content House broke up in February 2021, with multiple TikTokers calling out management for alleged grooming. The Sway House — featuring famous TikTokkers like Noah Beck and Bryce Hall — came to an end during the same month. “They left in shambles,” Larray says in Season 1 of the reality series Hype House. “But that’s not my tea!”

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Hype House member Alex Warren blames the short lifespan of these houses on talent management companies, who cobble them together in exchange for a cut of the profits. “They just get a bunch of TikTokers and just put them together like they’re casting a show,” Warren says on the show. “So, of course, they’re eventually going to fail, because they didn’t become friends because they wanted to, they became friends because they had to.”

The Hype House, on the other hand, pays rent through sponsored videos, primarily for Bang energy drinks. This model features its own challenges, however — throughout the series, Petrou discusses how difficult it is to get members to post and how sad it is when they eventually move out.

“The business side of me is very happy when people get to a point where they don’t need Hype House anymore and they’re doing really well, because that just shows how well I’ve worked,” Petrou says. “But, on the personal end, I just keep watching friends leave.”

Since Hype House Season 1 filming wrapped in spring 2021, six members of the house — Warren, his girlfriend Kouvr Annon, Patrick Huston, Calvin Goldby, Connor “Paper” Yates and Michael Sanzone — have moved out, while reassuring fans that they’re still a part of the group but just live elsewhere. Now, Petrou has promised new, incoming talent to keep the Hype House going beyond the lifespan of other TikTok content houses.

“While this might be the end of one chapter of Hype House, there’s so many things to come,” Petrou says in the show’s finale. “It’s time for new people, and I’m excited for the future of Hype House 3.0.” Looks like they’re ready to break the collab curse.