From porn to Eso: the dark side of the TikTok guru “King Thomas”

“His Royal Holiness Thomas G. Hornauer” is back: The now 62-year-old Swabian esotericist and former telephone sex hotline operator now creates TikTok live streams and teaches spiritual dance courses. A bit reminiscent of senior gymnastics, it has tens of millions of views on TikTok – and as always with ‘King Thomas’, the crux of the matter is about the dirty Mammon.

If his “Majestät of German” doesn’t tell you anything, a little flashback:

Thomas G. Hornauer became a suspected multimillionaire in the 1990s as the operator of a “moan factory” with numerous 0190 sex hotlines.

He previously worked as a producer of erotic videos. Starting in 2003, he offered callers of premium numbers on his own television channel B.TV spiritual guidance: fortune telling, map reading, commuting, the whole program.

His equally esoteric follow-up channel “Kanal Telemedial” gained something of a cult following among Hornauer’s freaks – the guru regularly chided his callers. In contrast, the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” described the broadcaster in 2007 as “a single scam company embellished with a belief in fate”.

But that’s not all: in 2008, “King Thomas” founded the “United Holy German Kingdom” and proclaimed his own religion, “Christian Buddhism”.

The entrepreneurial guru has recently returned as a TikTok trend.

His Royal Holiness Thomas G. Hornauer is back

You can currently find the self-proclaimed king on TikTok as an Eso musician in a batik shirt, who makes young people dance for him in the live stream, barks instructions and holds absurd audiences.

The honor of speaking with His Highness goes to those “kings’ children” who make a generous donation to the enterprising businessman.

This is how the king’s new scam works

“Five of hearts,” says “King Thomas” at the beginning of his live videos. The saying represents a kind of blessing. Viewers can now submit a membership request. The king decides who is a guest in his streams and encourages the young audience to swing their legs on his “TAM Dance”. TAM stands for “Transentaler aktiv Meditations Tanz”, or something like that. The dance is said to evoke positive energies, have a healing effect on heart conditions and “shake the poison out of the cells”. To ask?

Recently, several of his bizarre streams went viral. Subscribers to the Schwurbel-King can tune in just like the earlier Eso-TV shows, as the guru speaks banal wisdom and comments on the youngsters’ dance interludes. If you don’t dance to your tune, you’ll be insulted as “fat” or something like that or kicked out of the stream. On the other hand, the aging esotericist is visibly in awe of young women who hop to his TAM Dance at home in front of the camera.

The grotesque show embarrasses others, which should also explain Hornauer’s success on TikTok. A quirky eccentric who strums his keyboard and throws metaphysical statements around. In the comments, most joke about “King Thomas”, which has long since become a meme.

“The Pied Piper of TikTok”

But there are tangible financial interests behind it: the viewers can send virtual gifts to the dancers. For this they have to pay with real money, which goes into the king’s (and TikTok) treasury. Of course, Hornauer regularly asks his audience for a donation. The German satirist Philipp Walulis described him as the “Pied Piper of TikTok”.

Hornauer goes back to his old scam from the Eso-TV days: Back then, viewers had to pay an “energy balance” for the energy gained by watching. Now young TikTokers should be exempted.

The subtle difference: in those days, the king made money with overpriced telephone numbers. In Germany he was investigated in 1.5 million cases on suspicion of commercial fraud. Today, the public rewards the grotesque performance with paid gifts that flash across the screen in the form of roses, for example. The most valuable gift is a virtual TikTok logo that costs only 500 euros. So Hornauer uses TikTok’s donation feature, which allows viewers to reward streamers for their achievements.

“King Thomas” has discovered TikTok as a new source of income. He can exchange the virtual gifts (roses, etc.) for real money.

To boost his income, he recently closed the chat himself for paying subscribers to his channel. Those who want to get noticed must make a donation now. The bigger the donation, the better, because the charitable donation ultimately stays in the family, Hornauer points out. Cult leaders reason in the same way.

When young people come across his videos on TikTok, it is not clear what the background of this man is.

The good news: the TikTok generation seems to see through the scam.

TikTokers fool Hornauer

While Hornauer was initially celebrated by many out of ignorance, the tide has now turned. His live streams are repeatedly hijacked by trolls and watched mostly to make fun of him.

TikToker gleefully pokes fun at Hornauer’s esoteric chatter. They mockingly ask him if he believes in crystals, since he runs a “Crystal Light Center”, an esoteric gem exhibit with gem sales and a throne room.

TikTokers like Freddi have noticed that Hornauer isn’t just innocent and funny. The teenager has almost 300,000 followers with his dance performances at the king. Now he educates his viewers on Hornauer’s scam and his dark past.

So the TikTok community is not that easy to get done. The best example is Freddi, who was a regular guest on Hornauer’s stream. He is now teasing the TAM dance with his own swag dance.

Hornauer gets verbal abuse on TikTok and YouTube. This may also be due to well-known YouTubers like Rezo smugly explaining Hornauer’s dark past in their videos.

The Dark Past of “King Thomas”

Hornauer has been a questionable figure for more than twenty years. He became rich with 0190 numbers in the 90s. When he took over the bankrupt TV broadcaster B.TV in 2003 for a bargain price of 1.6 million euros, he greeted the staff in his own way. The then 42-year-old yelled, “Get out of the holes, you cowards”. One video shows him jumping on a desk and shouting, “I want warriors who will make me millions.”

At the time, the “Spiegel” reported on Hornauer’s contacts with the Allgäu Wankmiller sect (Likatier), which made headlines over allegations of child sexual abuse.

Hornauer is said to have employed members of the cult in his telephone hotlines and in the TV station’s graphics department. According to employees, “cult-like conditions” prevailed in his companies. Employees reported being brainwashed in “one-on-one sessions lasting several hours”.

After a house search in December 2003, the Public Prosecution Service investigated suspected fraud against Hornauer. The allegations were barred and the proceedings were dropped. His stations were nevertheless closed due to various violations. Hornauer then switched to the Internet.

From his esoteric TV channel Kanal Telemedial, he developed the “Telemediale Lebensschule”, a “spiritual teaching” intended to help people find themselves.

Hornauer has become quieter in recent years. Most recently, in 2020, he attracted attention during a joint performance with the corona denier and founder of the German lateral thinkers movement, Michael Ballweg.

“In recent years there has been a strong overlap with scientific skepticism in the field of esotericism,” Ulrike Schiesser, general director of the Austrian Federal Office for Cult Issues, told Puls24.

However, the psychologist does not believe that the young people on TikTok will be rocked by Hornauer’s fuss. People seeking esoteric support wanted an open ear. Hornauer could not offer them that.

So the hype is not about the content. Rather, Hornauer is a TikTok phenomenon purely for its weirdness — albeit with an expiration date that is likely to be soon.