William Knight / There Is No Such Thing as a Coincidence

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Part of a series on TikTok. [View Related Entries]

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About

William Knight, also known as Grandrisingapp and There Is No Such Thing as a Coincidence, is the creator of the Grand Rising self-affirmation app who became viral on social media due to his videos in which he talks about nothing being a coincidence and acts in a manner that resembles an NPC from the 2006 video game The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. After a video of Knight went viral on Twitter in June 2021, the clips gained popularity in edits as an exploitable format.

Origin

On October 30, 2020, William Knight launched Grand Rising,^[1]^[2] a mobile self-affirmation app (image shown below).

Starting on December 2nd, 2020, Knight started promoting his app with videos posted on the TikTok account grandrisingapp.^[3] In most videos, Knight states that nothing is a coincidence and the fact that the viewer is watching his video means that they are energetically aligned with him, with the typical topics being paranormal and pseudoscience, particularly manifestation and reality shifting.

On December 2nd, 2020, Knight uploaded^[4] the first such video (shown below, left), which gained over 1.7 million views and 475,000 likes in seven months.

In the reply section of nearly all videos uploaded by Knight, multiple users commented on his unblinking stare, with some referring to it as "mesmerizing" and "hypnotic."

On March 15th, 2021, Knight posted a video^[5] in which he turned and "slid" towards the camera by speeding up the footage, with the manner resembling a dialogue with an NPC being initiated in the 2006 video game The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion (shown below, left). Knight used the same opening in most future videos (examples shown below, center and right).

Spread

On May 7th, 2021, h3h3 viewed several TikTok by Knight during an H3 After Dark episode.^[11] On May 9th, The H3 Podcast Twitter^[12] account posted a clip from the episode, with the tweet gaining over 58,900 views, 150 retweets and 2,500 likes in two months (shown below).

Knight did not achieve recognition outside of TikTok until June 21st, 2021, when he posted a video^[6] titled "Hack your subconscious mind" that received over 450,000 views and 79,500 likes on the app in three days. In the video, a William Knight inadvertently scares a jogger running past him, causing her to scream. On the same day, Twitter^[7] user @sab_weenuh reposted the video, with the repost accumulating over 7.6 million views, 69,600 retweets and 390,000 likes in three days (repost shown below).

There is no such thing as a coincidence. The fact that you are watching this video means that you are energetically aligned with me and this message.

In the replies, multiple users compared Knight to an NPC from Oblivion,^[8] Kingdom Hearts^[9] and other video games. Later on the same day, content creator @KinoFabino tweeted^[10] the earliest found edit of the video, an Oblivion NPC Dialogue parody that received over 37,800 views, 1,400 retweets and 5,600 likes in one day (shown below).

In late June 2021, the videos of Knight gained viral popularity online through reposts and humorous edits.