Want an A in His Class? You Had Better Go Viral.

It seemed like a typical first day of class. In January, Matthew Prince, a public relations executive at Taco Bell who teaches at Chapman University in Southern California, was telling 80 students what to expect from his influencer marketing course as he walked them through the syllabus projected onto a screen at the front of the lecture hall. This semester, he said, things would be a little different: If anyone in the class could create a TikTok video that received one million views before he did, the final exam would be canceled.