LOS ANGELES – Couples who go viral on social media tend to do so because of their relationships, parenting routines or aspirational lifestyles.

But husband-and-wife influencers Dean and Alexis Indot are getting millions of views for their posts on finance and economics instead.

And the American couple – who are based in Los Angeles, although Mr Indot grew up in Malaysia and has a Singaporean mother – have grown even more popular discussing the new tariffs being imposed by the United States.

Posting as @alexisanddean, they have amassed more than 1.7 million followers on TikTok and 300,000 on Instagram in the last two years.

Mrs Indot, 28, will ask her 53-year-old Kuala Lumpur-raised husband to explain or address a hot topic – for instance, whether tariffs will be inflationary, a post that has garnered 10 million views.

Mr Indot will then offer a pithy, direct and sometimes humorous explanation or viewpoint, often with an air of faint annoyance that followers seem to enjoy.

“Love this man’s energy”, reads one comment. “Please continue to explain as a frustrated parent might.”

The couple’s social media presence is entirely Mrs Indot’s doing, they share with The Straits Times in an interview.

She launched their joint TikTok account in March 2023, when the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank heralded a banking crisis in the US.

“There was so much chaos in the news and I didn’t understand it, so I asked Dean to explain what was going on.”

But Mr Indot – a commercial banking executive in Los Angeles – had no idea his wife was going to post a clip of his explanation on TikTok.

Or that the video, their first as @alexisanddean, would eventually rack up 1.3 million views.

“The next morning, she calls me and says it went viral. And I don’t even know what that means because I don’t use TikTok or Instagram.

“And she just kept posting after that, with me still being pretty oblivious about what it all means,” says Mr Indot, who has lived in the US since moving there to study. He attended California State University, Fullerton, where he graduated with a degree in business administration. He also has an MBA in strategy and finance from Pepperdine Graziadio Business School.

Reading through the comments on those early posts, Mrs Indot, who works as a mortgage broker, realised people were hungry for information.

“They were asking about investing in st...