Thomas Sanders (creator)

Thomas F. Sanders (born April 24, 1988) is an American Internet personality made famous by Vine and YouTube. He is best known for his Vine career until the app was shut down by Twitter at the beginning of 2017. After the shutdown of Vine, he shifted his online presence mainly to Youtube, though he had started to create content on Youtube before that as well. His online personality consists of comedy, impressions, singing, and social justice. He also has a career outside of the Internet performing in local theater productions with the hope of someday making it to Broadway. He managed to amass over 7.4 billion loops and 8.3 million followers on Vine, making his career one of the most successful in the app's short history.

Personal life

Thomas Sanders was born and raised in Gainesville, Florida and still lives there today. Although he does not reveal much about his family or personal life, he makes clear his pride of his predominantly Irish Catholic heritage, and he has revealed that he has three brothers: Patrick, Christian, and Shea.^[1]

On June 12th 2017, Sanders came out as gay in his video titled Having Pride.^[2]

Career

Online

Thomas Sanders began his internet persona as "Foster_Dawg", making Vines back when the app was created and began to gain popularity as a platform for creators in 2013. With that began a successful career on the Internet. He rebranded to "Thomas Sanders" as he became more and more famous. He is known for various series, such as "Narrating People's Lives", "Musicals in Real Life", "Shout Out Sunday", "Misleading Compliments", and "Disney Pranks with Friends".^[3] He reached 1 million followers on Vine in October, 2013. He managed to gain over 7.4 billion loops and 8.3 million followers on Vine.

Sanders started infrequently posting videos and compilations of his Vines on YouTube in May 2013. When Twitter announced that it was closing Vine down at the end of 2016, Sanders announced that he would continue making Vines until the app's last day and then focus more on his YouTube channel. Now a full-time YouTuber, his channel has 1.9 million subscribers. His YouTube videos include sketches, stories, collaborations, and social justice. He has various personas, all played by himself, that appear frequently in his videos to represent his thoughts and decisions such as "Anxiety", Patton or "Dad" (morality), Roman or "Disney Prince" (daydreams and fantasy), and Logan or "Logic" (teacher). He has also continued making short videos in the style of Vine on his Instagram.

Theater and singing

Apart from his Internet-based career, Sanders works in musical theater, performing in local productions for Buchholz High School, Gainesville High School, and the Gainesville Community Playhouse. Among the many roles he has taken on include The Baker, The Wolf and Cinderella's Prince in Into the Woods, Leo Bloom in The Producers, Phil Davis in a production of White Christmas, Inspector Javert in Les Miserables, and J.D. in the Orlando production of Heathers: The Musical.

Sanders has sung multiple times in his Vines and YouTube videos, his voice spanning many genres. He has also sung duets with Dodie Clark, Jon Cozart, Ben J. Pierce and others.

Other works

Thomas Sanders guest starred in the Bizaardvark episode "In Your Space" portraying the titular reality web show's host Ian Finkelman.

Awards and nominations

Music

2016

• "Birds" ft. Dodie Clark
• "Dear Happy" ft. Dodie Clark
• "Vine vs YouTube" ft. Jon Cozart

2017

• "RIP Vine" ft. Jon Cozart
• "A Lovely Night" ft. Ben J. Pierce (La La Land (Film) cover)
• "Waving Through a Window" ft. Dodie Clark, Ben J. Pierce (Dear Evan Hansen cover)
• "New York, New York" ft. Dodie Clark (cover)

References