Ben Donaldson has never been to Marblehead, Massachusetts. He’s not from there. He’s never even been to New England. And yet, if you spend five minutes on TikTok, you might reasonably assume he’s the town’s most devoted hype man.
The mystery began when Donaldson — now a freshman at Wabash College in Indiana — created a TikTok account called @marbleheadmassachusetts. The page is a love letter to Marblehead delivered with deadpan sincerity and relentless repetition. The joke lands immediately: here’s a kid from Wisconsin posting as if he’s the unofficial ambassador of a coastal Massachusetts town he’s only met through the internet. It’s absurd. It’s specific. And it’s very funny.
So how does someone become obsessed with a place they’ve never visited?
According to Donaldson, it all traces back to a single line in a video by Kyle Gordon. While scrolling TikTok during his junior year of high school, Donaldson stumbled on a sketch about life in the 1700s that casually referred to Marblehead as “the greatest city in the world.”
That one phrase stuck. Donaldson started repeating it to friends, remixing the clip, and posting it over and over again — partly because it amused him, and partly because it annoyed everyone else.
Eventually, the bit needed a bigger stage. Enter TikTok.
The @marbleheadmassachuetts account became a running gag turned full-time persona. Donaldson began answering hypothetical travel questions with “Marblehead, Massachusetts,” declaring it his dream destination, and presenting his fascination with complete earnestness.
Somewhere along the way, the joke stopped being just a joke and became “a major part of my life and my personality,” as Donaldson himself puts it.
The irony, of course, is that Marblehead isn’t even a city; it’s a town. Donaldson learned this only after residents started finding his page. And that’s where things really took off.
Locals began interacting with the account, tagging Donaldson in posts about real, hyper-specific Marblehead issues, housing authority drama, town politics, and neighborhood grievances.
Some people seemed genuinely convinced he was “in charge.” Donaldson, for his part, found this even funnier. His favorite part of the whole experience isn’t the town’s picturesque harbor or historic homes (which he’s only seen in photos), but the residents who have embraced the chaos and pulled him into their very real civic discourse.
There’s something oddly charming about the whole thing. In an internet landscape driven by outrage and algorithms, Donaldson’s Marblehead fixation is harmless, surreal, and joyful. It’s not satire with an edge — it’s a long-running inside joke that accidentally became a community touchpoint.
Will Donaldson ever actually visit Marblehead? Maybe.
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Since this story has ran in the Daily Item, Colleen Inglis who owns an Airbnb in town has offered to donate a couple nights for Donaldson and his family to stay in the heart of old town.
if there is enough interest I will start a GoFundMe to get him up here for the Marblehead Festival of Arts.
I mean, crazier things have happened and I think we could all use a good story with a happy ending right about now.
For now, the greatest city in the world exists exactly where it needs to: on TikTok, through the eyes of someone who loves it purely because it made him laugh once, and never stopped.
