TikTok Newsletter 27

TikTok & the Capitol siege. Shantification. The Comments. New Newsletters

Hi subscriber,

this is Understanding TikTok your weekly infusion of TikTok related news. My name is Marcus.

Writer/artist and academic Daniel Rourke recently tweeted: “TikTok is hard to fathom. Yes. I will be 39 in March” while BBC journalist Marc Settle slowed down this TikTok transition video in order to comment “but if you slow it down you’ll see the joins.” I see more and more people from my Internet bubble grappling with the app.

This week we talk about:

🏛️🔥 TikTok & the Capitol siege
🌊 Shantification
📦 The Comments
📮 New Newsletters

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🏛️🔥 TikTok & the Capitol siege

The Capitol riot was surprisingly difficult to find on the app, writes Rebecca Jennings. And adds two main reasons: The first is that TikTok is not, and was never intended to be, a news-sharing platform. The second reason is that TikTok likely didn’t want users to see it.

I can second that. It was hard to find content of the events in Washington while they took place besides some that i already mentioned last week or over on Twitter like
Marcus DiPaola who e.g. posted this widely shared video. Buzzfeed has a summary here: This Is How TikTok Responded To The Chaos In Washington. Techcrunch has more on the hashtag ban here. Ad make sure to read Kerem’s take on TikTok Trends about the events too.

Alex Connor @thealexconnor

Our TikToks re: Capitol riots earned 1.7 million total views. So don’t tell me there isn’t an appetite for news there. The platform, like other social media, is flooded with misinformation. We have to meet readers where they’re at and correct the record when we can.

Despite TikTok not being a news-sharing platform, i am convinced that it will be used more and more for covering the news. Yahoo News for example posted 38 TikTok videos on Jan 6 including the very bizarre Elizabeth from Knoxville video that has gotten nearly 30 million views until now. 

Washington Post TikTok Guy, Orwellian Academic @davejorgenson

This one, understandably, has almost 20 million views

And then there was the eyewitness report by Tania DC who filmed one of the rioters who broke into the Capitol learning that he was on a No-Fly list pending the full investigation.

Ray [REDACTED] @RayRedacted

People who broke into the Capitol Wednesday are now learning they are on No-Fly lists pending the full investigation. They are not happy about this.

Nonetheless many TikTok users did what TikTok users currently do best. There are 286 videos dueting the original video, some including people just having popcorn. The general range of reaction videos after the siege is wild. It includes the cousins of Mike Pence, Claudia Conway (of course), the hallway paintings take, a capitol rioter fit check, love for CNN Donie and of course Home alone.

Apart from that we should not forget that besides the hashtag ban far-right militias are using TikTok to organize and recruit new members.


🌊 Shantification

TikTok’s unique ability to plumb the depths of obscure genres and hoist them to the forefront of popular culture has landed another viral sensation: the sea shanty, writes Clayton Ashley on Polygon.

If you are an avid user of the apps you have probably seen one, two, three or already  too many versions of the Wellermann. Hashtag count #seashanty currently nearly 68 million views.

Just like the crew of a ship would join each other in song to keep up their spirits on a long, isolated journey, TikTok users began to duet and remix the aged sea shanty. The additions were small at first...but quickly got out of hands. (Polygon, January 12)
Maybe the timing for an easy sing-along to keep the spirits alive is perfect, given an enduring global pandemic. Or maybe the aesthetic was just to become big as forecasted by creative strategists. 🤷

“Shantytok may literally be the only good thing happening on social media right now”, tweets Kevin Roose, Tech columnist for the New York Times. 7 hours later Rebecca Jenninngs, internet culture at Vox, tweets “sea shanty tiktok is getting out of control ... this is too many ppl”. And Polygon has Electro Shanty.

subtle gynandromorph @sashageffen

sea shanties trending on tiktok right on schedule https://t.co/FD5SDYSNvB

Ayesha A. Siddiqi @AyeshaASiddiqi

Sea/ocean aesthetics will be big next year and over the next two years, and broadly interpreted. On sea, on coasts, underwater. Think goth nautical and oblivious-to-the-world sailing weekends. Drowned mermaids. Seaweed covered gold. Vaporwave without digital nostalgia.

The phenomenon is yet another prove that TikTok is very successful encouraging users to produce videos, the barriers are low and a high number of viewers become posters. The duet-feature serves as unleasher for endless creativity. Users do not seem to be yet bored trying out ever new ways to combine videos. As Taylor Lorenz writes: Stuff like this is why any TikTok clone that doesn’t offer a duet function will never truly be able to compete.

And it all happens quite fast. User Nathan Evanss posted the Wellermann on december 27. And we might have already seen a tipping point. BoingBoing has written about it a week ago. Vulture has written about it 2 hours ago (January, 12). We will see more articles until it all dies as yesterday’s news. Kyle Chayka: You have to listen to the sea shanties this week, not next week. (Better yet today, not tomorrow.)

That means: If you are a brand that wants to jump on this or any other trend you have to be fast and you have to be clever. Otherwise you end up on a skateboard drinking cranberry juice just a little too late.

📦 The Comments

Kalhan adds: There are more than 35,000 comments on this video and I can’t find one not participating in the joke.

The comments section of TikTok is a special place. I have not yet found an article unwrapping the entire universe. But there is a Medium article by Kristin Merrilees called The Comments Are Now the Best Part of TikTok that is worth a read! She explains things like the fairy comments and  so much more. Quote: The creativity, nuance, and complexity in these different comment threads is endless. A whole new ecosystem of discussion and language has been created. 

And she explains why TikTok comments sections are so different than, say, those on Instagram or YouTube.

📮New newsletters covering TikTok

01 Alex Connor has a substack newsletter. How could i miss that? Alex job description on Twitter “tiktoks and tweets @ usatoday”. Between the Internet and Me. That´s the name of the newsletter. And here is the link. It started December 4. And here is what it is all about: In this newsletter, I hope to explore the corners of the internet that I don’t quite understand through the lens of a platform I am entirely too comfortable with. Looking at you, TikTok.

02 The kids are alright. Another new newsletter. A TikTok newsletter for uncertain times by Lena Wilson, a culture writer and critic based in Brooklyn. Lena writes: what started as a mildly age-inappropriate way to pass the time has now grown into one of my most consistent sources of enjoyment, and i want to share that enjoyment with you, my readers. i think i’m pretty good at this. in 2020 alone, i explained Lesbian TikTok, Randonauting, and Harry Potter TikTok to readers of The New York Times.

03 And there is another brand new ambitious kid on the block. Called TikTok Trend Watch. Quote: I share TikTok trends to help you create better TikTok native content (without spending hours scrolling!) The idea is to post a TikTok trend of the Day. As someone who runs a daily podcast i see the challenge here. Good luck stranger.

That’s it. You have reached the end 🖨️ Thx for reading. Marcus