Over the past several months, TikTok videos have begun to go viral beyond the platform, racking up millions of views on Twitter and Instagram. They’re easy to identify once you've seen a couple: 15-second-to 1 minute long clips set to music, often featuring someone lipsyncing, dancing, or doing a trick, with TikTok's logo—the letter "b," styled to look like a music note— overlaid on top. And the edits are fast: watching too many in a row can feel like you're about to have a brain freeze. They're incredibly addictive.
The Instagram account @selfies_food_and_pets was early to catch on to TikTok’s viral nature, racking up hundreds of thousands of views by sharing the best of the platform early on, but now it feels like every mid level memer is posting them regularly. Even nonfamous 14-year-olds have started interspersing them between other photos on their Instagram pages.
Some of this rapid growth is due to an aggressive marketing campaign. Bytedance, the $75 billion Chinese tech conglomerate that owns TikTok, merged the app with Musical.ly, a similar app it also owned, in August. Since the merger, Bytedance has advertised the app seemingly wherever young people turn: TikTok ads are all over Snapchat and YouTube; there's even a wall plastered with the TikTok logo in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
YouTube may be down, but TikTok is alive, awake and never better #StayWoke #YouTubeDown #MakeSocialFunAgain pic.twitter.com/sjEw8Si4Bj
— TikTok (@tiktok_us) October 17, 2018
As with any new shortform video app, TikTok has invited debates about whether it's the next Vine (nothing is) or Snapchat (also no). But TikTok is hard to categorize. It's a social network with an impressive suite of video editing tools, Snapchat-like AR filters, and features that let you sync your video to nearly any soundtrack you can think of. Lots of content on the app is lip syncing, but some of the most popular videos are people dancing, cooking, doing Zach King-esque magic tricks, pets, and re-enacting comedy skits and old vines.
The category most people on the broader internet use to describe TikTok is "cringe”: It’s so painful and embarrassing that a viewer can't help but laugh. There are endless TikTok cringe compilations on YouTube, many with millions of views. Earlier this month, a thread of “cringey” TikTok videos went viral on Twitter. In one video, a woman standing in front of a bathroom mirror does thumb movements to a Yo Gotti and Nicki Minaj song before panning up to reveal that she's filming by holding the phone in her mouth. In another, man wearing a Walmart vest dances emphatically to Rihanna's S&M in his bedroom in front of a confederate flag.
Because the app merged with Musical.ly, which most people associated with children, there's a prevailing notion that adults who make content on TikTok are creepy and weird. "Adults are just learning what it is and getting on there," Jack Wagner, a popular Instagram memer and internet personality, told me. "I haven't seen one piece of content on there made my an adult that's normal and good. To be a grown adults doing a cute karaoke video on an app and trying to make it go viral is odd behavior."
But most adults using the app aren't trying to go viral, they're making TikTok videos because it's fun. As Kyle Mabson, the Instagrammer behind @selfies_food_and_pets said, "A large portion of people on there are just like, I love this Evanescence song and I need to show people my interpretation." In a world where everyone's content inevitably begins to look the same, TikTok videos feel bizarre and new. It's an app full of people posting strange content to the internet with zero self awareness or shame. That's easy to mock, but it's also what may lead to TikTok's success.
13. this show is a cancer to society pic.twitter.com/66Bmt9Gnyq
— ⋆ haley ⋆ (@moshspit) October 7, 2018
For any platform to become mainstream it must first become less cool. Many people thought that anyone older than 18 posting photos to Myspace, sharing their life on Facebook, blogging on Tumblr, staging photos on Instagram, or using Snapchat was cringe. Some people still do, but for the most part using these platforms has been normalized. Besides, everything about social media is mortifying and cringy, but it gives us an outlet for expression and way to connect with new people, so we use it.
This is not to say that TikTok will necessarily be the next massively popular social app—that depends on myriad other factors. But for a social platform to successfully grow, it must reach the confused parents, the people who don't quite know when the camera is recording, the ones get a little too personal, or who aren't Instagram-influencer attractive but have the gall to put themselves out there anyway. TikTok doesn't need to cater to a subset of blasé hyper-Online edgelords to reach masses, it needs to appeal to average users. And while the internet is hating or making rude edits, TikTok is saturated with locals having a great time.
24. fuck!!!! pic.twitter.com/tVzHNCivmj
— ⋆ haley ⋆ (@moshspit) October 7, 2018
And it needs to welcome to niche communities. TikTok is home to groups of contortionists, furries, cosplayers, fitness gurus, new parents, nurses, cops, marines, adult babies, goth kids, and more. Some of the most popular TikTok cringe compilations and Twitter threads mock these people, but users in these communities say it's the internet bullies who don't get it.
Our favorite cover of “Stand by Me.” 😍 pic.twitter.com/qcVTwiPvI5
— TikTok (@tiktok_us) October 22, 2018
Natalia Mitchell, a college student who identifies as a furry and asked to be referred to using gender-neutral pronouns, posts videos of themself dancing in a fox costume. Mitchell said they noticed a spike in harassment over the past couple months after TikTok began heavily advertising on YouTube, and believe some people sign up for TikTok just to make fun of users like them. "If you're abnormal in any way shape or form, kids will come on and make fun of you," Mitchell said. "LGBT, disabled, or anyone in a fandom that's anything outside of the norm [will get harassed]. I don't really let it get to me, it's just horrifying to see which direction the internet is going." Despite the harassment, Mitchell said they still "genuinely enjoy" using the TikTok and won't stop posting.
And besides, TikTok stars may get the final laugh. As viral cringe compilations continue to spread, more people are becoming aware of the app and downloading it, and many who do love what they find.
"TikTok is not merely an app, it’s an experience. It’s an avenue to a different world…" Hardik Rajgor, a writer in India recently explained in a piece defending the app. "It’s not populated only by your friends, people like you, or those belonging to the same economic, social and cultural environment as you… On TikTok, there’s place for everyone, and that is its beauty."
"Man," one man recently put on Twitter, "i swear i’ve seen some of the best content ever on the godforsaken app that is tiktok."
from Technology | The Atlantic https://ift.tt/2yxVTDi
