What We Know About TikTok Star Jake Shane (Aka Octopusslover8)

Jake Shane has come a long way since starting a TikTok account dedicated to his love of octopus, but what do we know about him?

Since initially sharing tongue-in-cheek octopus reviews by way of his aptly named account, Octopusslover8, Shane has gone on to amass hundreds of millions of TikTok likes. No longer limited to tentacle content, he's started sharing parodies of some of the world's biggest brands (hello, Diet Coke's meltdown), to Alexander Hamilton finding out about Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical. And, like many a TikTok star has done before him, he's made it outside of the app, too. As he told GQ, he's been approached by a number of agencies — and in March 2023, Variety reported that he'd joined WME. "I'm so grateful to the team at WME for believing in my vision and can't wait to get started," he said at the time. As for what that vision entailed, he told GQ that, despite his social media roots, he wanted to pursue acting. "I think everyone thought I was going to walk in there, be like, 'I want to be an influencer'  — which is great and that is amazing, but I don't think I would be super good at it. I know I am good at acting. Actually, I don't know if I am good at it, but it's what makes me the happiest," he explained.

So, Shane dreams of a life in Hollywood ... but what else do we know about him?

Despite the stars aligning regarding his dream job, Jake Shane continues to deal with serious anxiety and OCD — and he's not hiding it. In fact, the opposite is true. 

Speaking to GQ, Shane explained that while he loved that his content was resonating with so many people, it definitely has had an impact on his mental health. "I catastrophize a lot of things. Part of my anxiety has always been that when something is going good, all I can think about is how it could go bad," he told the outlet. That's meant agonizing over content, concerned that everything could take a turn for the worse. As he pointed out, "It's so scary because it feels so good when everyone loves you, but I can only imagine how bad it feels when everyone hates you." It's also reignited his anxiety over captioning. 

Even with all the anxiety, however, Shane is determined to work through it — and part of that has been opening up about his mental health with his audience. "I'm not going to lie! What am I going to do? I'm not going to sit there and cry. I'm going to laugh and see if anyone else is anxious too," he shared. In an interview on The Zach Sang Show, he revealed that he'd also started writing poetry to calm his mind. "It gets a few giggles out of people, and that makes me feel better," she joked. 

Given his commitment to getting those giggles, it's no surprise that when Jake Shane saw a video of Julia Fox acting out comments she'd received, he saw an opportunity to create content people really wanted to see. Enter, his historical reenactments era — an endeavor that really wasn't inspired by his own love of history. 

As he explained in an interview with "Summer House" alum, Hannah Berner, "People are like, 'Are you a history buff?' And I'm like, 'Uh, my mom is, and my brother is, but I'm not' ... The comments tell me what to do." The result? As Berner pointed out, he's "turning, like, historical events into reality TV." Sure enough, as he joked on "The Elvis Duran Show," his goal is to remind audiences that there's something relatable in every historical event. "At the end of the day, we're all humans, so we probably have the same feelings that we did 500 years ago. So ... if I was Marie Antoinette, and I was offering them cake and everyone took it the wrong way, I'd be upset, too," he quipped. 

Though Shane has told Elite Daily that he's nervous about sharing his dreams for the future, he certainly wasn't opposed to Berner's suggestion that he create "a TV show where you, like, start from the beginning of time." History buff or not, it's safe to say this content creator knows how to give audiences what they want.