“I will never ever download this weird app,” I muttered to myself as I exited the TikTok advertisement that interrupted my Kim Kardashian game. Yes, I played the Kim Kardashian game well up until a few months ago.
Rewinding a little bit over a year ago, TikTok was more or less a laughing stock in the world of social media. It was an app (previously known as musical.ly) that children flocked to in order to make cringey creative videos of singing and dancing to music. Times were tough though, and TikTok’s advent came at a critical time amidst the demise of Vine.
Vine was a defining era in the history of the internet. I never personally endorsed it, but I was able to see the impact that it had at curating humor across all ages who grew up in the era of computers and smartphones. Some people might describe it as top-tier, galaxy brain, superior levels of clever humor; to put it a bit more bluntly, it’s a compilation of videos with ‘shitposting’ humor just short enough to capture the short attention span of a person and have them laugh for five seconds. Honestly, I’ll admit it that it does take some level of genius to craft an art like that.
While their valiant advertising efforts didn’t work on me, TikTok did manage to pick up some steam in the wake of Vine’s discontinuation. People were so desperate for a new app that even slightly mirrored their once beloved Vine that they took to one that used to be seen as a joke. Now the app that was once seen as a tik’ing time bomb, has surged to become a top contender amongst the heavy hitters of social media.
My first look into how viral TikTok would become came from various memes that people were crafting out of a TikTok that was used as a reaction video to express how uncertain they felt about something. I considered myself to be considerably removed from TikTok, so I know when it gets my eyes (and even more so my conscious brain) that it must be a pretty big deal.
I discovered this video on an Instagram meme account. It becomes pretty evident that something is about to blow up when you no longer have to be on the app itself [TikTok] to catch wind of it.
Another favorite creator on the app that I’m particularly fond of is someone who turns his videos into a visceral experience you most likely internalized as a student in elementary school. I discovered this TikTok on Twitter, and it actually convinced me to download the app myself. I will say that, for how successful TikTok has become, it is very telling that a lot of its traction comes from other apps like Instagram and Twitter. For an app to truly become successful, it must be able to stand on its own rather than rely on other apps for its dissemination.
Part of TikTok’s errors lie in its user experience. Many have noted that you have to filter through the quantity in order to come across a piece of quality. That, on its own, becomes the pro and con of TikTok: Its focus is just on users being silly, having fun, and putting out what they want, but that doesn’t make for great UX. As more people join, there is higher potential for quality content. Until then, people who have the stamina to search for the next viral video will continue to bring it to a far more mainstream platform to gain their own internet clout.