TikTok’s Favorite Servers Spread Positivity and Brain Rot
McDonald’s has Ronald. KFC has the Colonel. Bernie’s has Marty and Missy. Missy McIntosh and Marty Miller, two friends and comedians who work at the popular Greenpoint restaurant, have turned a simple neighborhood joint into the set of TikTok’s best workplace comedy over the course of the summer. In their videos gassing each other up or gabbing near the dumpsters after a long shift, McIntosh and Miller employ a bizarre dialect of their own invention that expresses simple sentiments in as many convoluted words as possible. Blue eyes stretched horror-movie-poster-wide — flash on — each laughs behind the camera as they film the other chatting about their life in off-the-cuff conversations that sound like what would happen if you wrote a whole TV show just by hitting the middle button on iMessage predictive text. For example, instead of just saying “My stomach hurts,” Marty and Missy would say, “Hey girl, for me, not being good at all. My ‘tomach hurting so for bad, and my head body too not being of for good today.” Miller defines it as, simply, “brain rot.”
It’s hard to explain on paper, but it’s infectiously funny on TikTok. Since they started posting short sketches together less than two months ago, they have amassed a combined 9.4 million likes on their TikTok videos, which have expanded into the realm of solo affirmational monologues about self-care.. Their comments sections are an uncommonly kind place, where fans say things like “I would literally only go to NY to see you two,” “Help I’m starting to dream in this language,” and “I want you to know that I’m pregnant and I have now started talking to my bump like this.” Last week, we met across the street from Bernie’s after Fashion Week, which saw Miller dressed in Bode for an in-character TikTok for Saks. “We’ve never planned a goddamned thing,” he clarifies. Now, the two were back in their black restaurant uniforms, about to clock in for a shift, giggling and talking over each other with the sort of synchronicity normally only seen in conjoined twins. Which begs the question …
When did you first meet?
Miller: A whole entire one single year ago.
McIntosh: We hire people seasonally at Bernie’s, and we had someone who got into a bike accident, sadly. He’s fine.
Miller: And now he actually works with us!
McIntosh: We were really sad to lose him. He was such a strong server, and it was like, Ugh, now we’re gonna hire this other guy, who’s friends with someone, and I was like [sighing] “Whatever, bring him in.”
Miller: She was mad.
McIntosh: I kind of was, randomly.
Miller: I started, and Missy trained me.
McIntosh: Horribly, I think.
Miller: No, you did good. And I feel like we were fast friends.
McIntosh: Not too fast, though.
Miller: Yeah, sure, whatever.
What did you do to win her over?
Miller: Be my completely perfect gorgeous self.
McIntosh: It’s just that sometimes people can be phony-nice at first. So it wasn’t too much, too fast, and then suddenly we became inseparable.
What was the moment you really bonded as friends?
Miller: We had a day where we we said —
McIntosh: — “This has to be the best day of our lives.”
Miller: “We’re gonna take mushrooms, and we’re gonna drink wine, and we’re gonna flounce and bounce in the park, and we’re gonna do lots of amazing things.”
McIntosh: “We’re just gonna feed our souls and be happy as hell.”
Miller: And then our boss called, saying, “someone is sick, we really need someone to work.”
McIntosh: And we were like, “We don’t know how to say this, but we have plans to do mushrooms in the park, I’m so sorry.”
Miller: We did a paddleboat, and it was the best day ever. So this summer we were like, “We have to re-create that. We have to get in a boat somehow.” So we woke up at the crack of dawn …
McIntosh: I was actively getting dumped, I was in such a bad space.
Miller: Missy was getting dumped by someone who’s obviously delusional and needs a lot of help. And we drove to this lake, Miss Piss. What’s it called again?
McIntosh: Canopus. Can o’ piss.
Miller: Miss Piss. We were having so much fun, and then we came back to Brooklyn, and we went to dinner and had 13 million glasses of Etna Bianco, and we just started making a TikTok. For the year that we’ve been friends, we were always like, “We have to be making TikToks.”
McIntosh: “We’re idea people!”
Miller: We have so many ideas, but we never do anything with them.
McIntosh: We’re always like, “Wait, that’s the best idea I ever heard.” This one was not planned in the least. I just started filming Marty and we were like [widens eyes and gives a puckered smile].
Miller: We thought it was hilarious, obviously. So the next day after work, we made another video, and that was the one that really went cuckoo bananas.
Had you already been doing that voice to each other before you made the video? Where is it from?
McIntosh: Everyone’s like, “I bet this is about a customer” or “I bet it’s about this,” but we have no idea where it came from. Which is the reason why it’s changed a lot.
Miller: I have a character I did years ago called Big Fashion Guy, and this is maybe his daughter, or son, or they/them child. It’s close to that, but it does shift.
McIntosh: Mine, when I’m alone, is kind of a motivational speaker. And when I’m with you, I’m just glad.
Miller: The last thing we are is consistent.
What is this language? Who are these characters?
Miller: That is so interesting you ask. We are people who have no idea. I wish more than anything I could tell you what it is.
McIntosh: When we did it the first time, I felt like I was trying to do an AI Russian bot. Now I feel like it’s an alien, learning every day.
Miller: A happy alien.
McIntosh: You take a sentence and completely take a bat to it.
Miller: And throw in the words completely, awesome, beauty, golden. There are some key words. Anyone can do it, really. Anyone can whistle, and anyone can speak like this.
McIntosh: “Completely” is all I can say now.
You mentioned these characters are always positive, and as these videos have gone on you’ve leaned into more motivational content. Why do you think there’s been such a huge response to that?
McIntosh: There’s a lot of sadness right now, and we need to hear motivational stuff. I’ll speak for myself. I have this joke with my friends, where when something horrible happens, we go, “this is good because …” You break a huge glass, and there’s shards everywhere, and you’re like, “This is good because I get to use my broom.” We can look at life from this different perspective, this weird alien, Russian chat bot perspective. It rewires your brain. It’s cathartic, randomly.
Miller: If I may, we are extremely mentally ill. We are not well. And this is helpful.
Do you remember when this bled out of the comments into real life and you started getting noticed?
Miller: Everything happened at once. A month ago, I had 600 followers on TikTok.
McIntosh: And I had 200.
Miller: So it’s quite funny and shocking.
McIntosh: We’re getting stopped every day, for sure. But I don’t know when the first time was.
Miller: It’s fun. I’m not gonna lie and say, “It’s annoying and uncomfortable.” No, it’s sweet and nice and fun. As someone who’s been performing in this city for seven years, it feels quite frankly amazing to be recognized for making someone laugh.
McIntosh: My mom was like, “I mean this is a miracle.”
Miller: Or it makes complete mathematical perfect sense.
Do people come into the restaurant to see you guys?
McIntosh: People definitely come in. We don’t know if we’re gonna get fired over this.
Miller: We’re just trying to be as cool as possible.
McIntosh: But 95% of the tables are like, You came in to see us. But Bernie’s has always been so busy.
Miller: Bernie’s was already popping the hell off. Which, for the record: Come to Bernie’s.
McIntosh: We owe everything to Bernie’s.
Miller: We’ve both been a waitress for ten thousand years, and this is by far my favorite waitress job I’ve ever had.
McIntosh: I was trying to be a comedian, trying to be an actor, trying to be a singer, trying to be every type of performer. I’m 33, I thought I was kind of just done, that I was just gonna do voiceover stuff and work at the restaurant. It’s just so fun to do something like this with your friend because it’s on complete accident.
What is it about the workplace environment at Bernie’s that leads to this sort of silly energy?
McIntosh: Bernie’s is like theater. It’s a show that we put on every night. Everyone that works there is very unique, very alpha. The show writes itself. It’s wild in there. But also, everyone’s a hard worker, and it’s open for a short amount of time, so we all just go in there, work our asses off, and we’re all comfortable with each other.
Miller: A lot of restaurants are pretty strict, or have guidelines about the way you need to behave. But you can really be yourself at Bernie’s, and when Missy’s herself and I’m myself, well, the sky’s the limit, doll.
What do people do when they come into the restaurant to see you?
McIntosh: It’s shocking to me how brave everyone is. I think because everyone thinks that they’re our friends, which is great, because we make people feel comfortable, but they’ll ask us to say stuff.
Miller: All of a sudden they’re recording, and they’re like, “Say hi to my girlfriend!” And I’m like, “Hi Stacy, I guess!”
McIntosh: We just try to make it as low key and seamless as possible, to not disrupt any service stuff. Because it’s busy, and we have to work.
What does management think of all of this?
McIntosh: They know that we’re doing crazy stuff online.
Miller: But they’re supportive. Earlier this year, I did my solo show, and the entire front of house staff came. I’m actually doing my solo show at Bernie’s on October 7, and Missy is opening.
McIntosh: On a Monday, which is when we’re closed. One of the owners, Taylor, is really supportive of everyone’s outside endeavors and dreams. They hire people that are a certain performer-type. When we made the first video, we thought it was so funny, but we did not think that it was gonna be something like, “Look what we did in our Bernie’s polos!”
So now are you like, excited to go into work, because it means you get to make videos?
Miller: I rarely dread going in. Maybe I’m just tired from being a gay waitress in New York City with two cats and IBS, but now it’s fun to have people be excited about it. Even after all this time — ”all this time,” it’s been about three seconds — I was so tired, cooked, fried, done, kaput, the other night. I did not want to make a video, but we were like, “we should just make one.” And we did, and my mood complete turned around, like “Rock on dude, now I’m in a great fucking mood. Should we go party?”
McIntosh: We really feed off each other’s energy.
You’re both performers. Had you ever had something go viral like this before?
Miller: In the pandemic, I had a moment of virality with my sock puppets. I did fall into a dark hole where I was making a sock puppet every day during the pandemic. So you can imagine.
Do you find yourselves getting more fluent in this “language” as you go?
Miller: Frankly, I’m getting less fluent.
You’re doing new characters now, too.
Miller: I love those little girls. Huge juggy wuggies.
McIntosh: We were doing a bit in that voice earlier…
Miller: …during work, in front of tables.
McIntosh: A friend literally lost a button on their dress and has these nice boobs.
Miller: And we really ran with it.
Missy, you’ve processed personal stuff, like break-ups or being ghosted, in some of these videos. Is it cathartic for you to bring your real life into them?
McIntosh: I did one where I was crying, saying, “I’ve been visited by an emotion,” and a therapist [in the comments] was like “I’m using this with my patients.”
Miller: You’re changing the world.
McIntosh: I’m kind of a spiritual leader.
Where do you see these characters going next?
Miller: Who the hell knows?
McIntosh: Hopefully on a cruise in Mexico.
Miller: Hopefully to an all-inclusive with a lazy river.
McIntosh: We want to go on a trip.
Miller: My overall hope is that these characters help highlight the artists that Missy and I are in other ways. But frankly, I could do this voice ’til I die, and keep making funny videos with Missy. Nothing makes me happier.
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