Tatum Talks, the Hermon-based rescue dog with millions of followers on TikTok and other social media platforms, won a People’s Voice Webby Award in the Animals category on Tuesday, awarded by fans of the popular pooch and his videos.
Tatum Talks — featuring the eponymous dog and his owners, Charles and Nicole Lever of Hermon — has more than 3.7 million followers on TikTok. When they found out they were nominated for a Webby Award three weeks ago, the Levers put out a call for votes, and their millions of fans from around the world — and from Maine — responded.
The Webby Awards were established in 1996 by the International Academy for Digital Arts and Sciences to honor excellence on the internet. The New York Times referred to it as the “Oscars for the internet.” The awards have been given to well-known creators ranging from celebrities like Jimmy Fallon, Banksy and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, activists like Greta Thunberg and Dr. Anthony Fauci, media companies like National Geographic, The Onion and HBO, and podcasts like Smartless, Pod Save America and StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
It also honors social media personalities and influencers like Tatum Talks, which documents the daily adventures of a rescued mixed breed dog in Maine, as voiced by Charles Lever.
The Levers told the website dogtime.com that they adopted Tatum from Maine-based rescue organization The Pixel Fund.
“I felt like I could see his soul through his eyes. I know it sounds really cliché, but I truly saw him,” Nicole Lever said. “I was like, this is our dog. I kept showing Charlie pictures of Tatum and he kept saying ‘no, no, we don’t need a dog.’”
In 2020, on a whim, the Levers started a TikTok account for Tatum. By the end of the year, they had hundreds of thousands of views, and today are one of the most popular animal-related accounts on the social media platform. Tatum and the Levers have since written a book, opened a web store to sell merchandise and have an agent for other branding deals.
This is Tatum Talks’ first Webby Award. The Levers said they plan to attend the awards ceremony with Tatum in New York City in May.
“This will all inevitably go right to Tatum’s head, but for a rescue dog to be in this position, we won’t hold back his excitement,” the Levers wrote in a social media post on Wednesday.
Other winners in the People’s Voice animals category include Tika the Iggy in 2023 and Mad Max Fluffy Road in 2022.
