Hello,
this is Understanding TikTok – your weekly TikTok update. My name is Marcus. The 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing have just begun. China hires western TikTokers to polish its image (Guardian, Die Zeit). NBCUniversal is partnering with TikTok. Expect daily content across NBC TikTok handles, as well as a three-episode livestream show hosted by a yet-to-be-named TikTok creator (Techcrunch). Here is the only video ⛷️ you need to see.
This week we talk about:
🍿 TikTok: Journalists and researchers
🛢️ TankTok
🚶 #FF: Biz Sherbert & Rayne Fisher-Quann
🍿 TikTok: Journalists and researchers
Taylor Lorenz (“ the country’s premier chronicler of Internet culture” Washington Post) is leaving the New York Times. “What a get for the Post: the only living person, including employees at TikTok, who understands what's happening on TikTok”, tweeted Ben Collins, Senior reporter @NBCNews. What probably was meant to be only nice (“Ben is being hyperbolic”) was not well received everywhere. Abbie Richards and others felt erased.
A good thing that came out of this little Twitter discrepancy is that a lot of people linked a lot of other people. For instance Tinca Lukan has a little list of reporters covering the online creator world and tech companies. And there are more names hidden in all the threads!
Besides reporters writing about TikTok there is a growing number of TikTok researchers as well. As of January 2022 there are 332 scholarly publications analyzing TikTok in the Scopus database – an abstract and citation database. According to Zeng, Abidin & Schäfer (Research Perspectives on TikTok and Its Legacy Apps) there were only 122 in April 2021. A good starting point for academic research on TikTok is the TikTok Cultures Research Network founded by Crystal Abidin aka @wishrcrys including great people.
Journalists and researchers – not always the easiest combination it seems, given this thread by wishcrys. I quote her conclusion🙏 :
We can probably be more kind, more generous, less defensive, less competitive with each other, while using our professional lenses to interrogate each others’ works productively…
🛢️ TankTok
Open-source intelligence (OSINT) is the collection and analysis of data gathered from open sources to produce actionable intelligence. TikTok is a video platform used by more than one billion active users. Some of them start pressing record while waiting at railroad crossings in Russia while endless tanks are rushing by.
There were two press reports about #TankTok last week. Professional analysts and amateur sleuths have turned to a mix of social media videos and satellite imagery in an attempt to gain insight into the Kremlin’s plans, writes NBC News. Analysts are poring over the snappy video clips to understand what is happening on the ground in real time, reports The Telegraph.
The Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab has a longer piece on Missile systems and tanks spotted in Russian far east, heading west from January 14, making use of TikTok videos, combining them with Google Street View or Satellite imagery. And if you want to jump directly into the sources, here you are. And here is a quick start doc by First Draft.
🚶 #FF: Biz Sherbert & Rayne Fisher-Quann
Are you old enough to remember FollowFriday on Twitter? Each and every Friday people recommended other people to follow some of their favorite people on the platform. Yeah, i know. You have your algorithm now to do the job. And you do not need to follow people on TikTok anyhow. Whatever.
I will start recommending people on the platform. Biz Sherbert is a writer with a focus on fashion and culture. She is markfisherquotes on Insta. And by chance i read her article The Devil Wars Blockchain in Spike #70 on Web3. She writes for Various Artists too. On TikTok Sherbert is The Digital Fairy (@thedigifairy 41,4K Follower 2,0 M Likes). There are some good observations.
Let’s talk about Rayne Fisher-Quann aka internet princess. This is her Substack. I first read her take on West Elm Caleb (quoted in #68) and then i saw Alice Ophelia recommending her TikToks (@raynecorp 177,7K Followers 8,2M Likes).
This account is pure gold. And not because Rayne shares an obsession for CharliXCX’s Detonate. You should hear her talk about good/bad writing or listen to her answering if her boyfriend is a feminist.
What else?
We’re having “seggs”, “secs” or “s3x”. Read more by Chris ('one-man-decentralized-internet-culture-brand') Stokel-Walker for Vice. By the way Chris wrote TikTok Boom. And here is a review.
What a headline. Terrible story. Terribile people. Dystopic TikTok Trend Demands Amazon Workers Dance for Surveillance Cameras. Then, they put it online for the enjoyment of strangers.
Finally: A TikTok trend for celebrities only. After all, despite how convincingly they may portray it, celebrity relatability on social media is just another one of their performances.
Shortly after Forbes released its “Top-Earning TikTokers 2022” list earlier this month, Black media professionals noticed that the list was surprisingly devoid of creators of color.
GIFs are for Boomers. Perhaps the waxing and waning popularity of the GIF is an ironic mirror of the format itself – destined to repeat endlessly, looping over and over again.
The Mucho Gucho Guy (Meme Rapper Viko63) walked Fendi, Prada, Jil Sander and Louis Vuitton. Before. After. Okay. But TikTok Megastar Khaby Lame Signs Multiyear Deal With Hugo Boss (via @MattNavarra). I did not even know that Hugo and Boss are two different things (Good TikTok Creative).
Take care.