A lot of curious challenges happen on TikTok, but the piercing challenge will have you screaming “No!” at the screen.
According to Know Your Meme, the challenge started circulating in early October, and possibly originated with a video from user Jamie Madison Read. The gist: Participants cycle through a Snapchat piercing filter, accompanied by a mashup of Rex Orange County’s “Loving Is Easy” and Sage the Gemini’s “No Ex’s.” Whatever piercing filter they land on, they have to get in real life. Allegedly.
In this TikTok, it was a bridge piercing. And though it looks real, Read states in the comments, “It’s a joke guys.” It also seems to be pretty easy to game the filter so it lands on a piercing you want.
While a lot of people seem to be getting performative with this challenge and going with fake piercings, elsewhere, participants are allegedly going to get their piercings professionally done, which is absolutely what should happen if you’re getting a piercing.
While others were more honest about why they weren’t following through.
Honestly, this is the most appropriate reaction to this challenge.
Again, for the love of God, don’t pierce your own face.
When T.S. Elliot wrote “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal,” was he talking about Facebook*? Earlier today, TechCrunch reported the Facebook-owned Instagram is working on its own TikTok competitor called Reels.
Reels, which Instagram is currently testing in Brazil, lets users create 15-second video clips that borrow from a huge catalog of music. And, just like TikTok, users can duplicate audio from other users, in order to create their own memes.
Users can choose to share their Reels with their close friends, to their stories, or publicly, where it’ll display in the “Explore” tab.
The feature is available to both iOS and Android users in Brazil. Instagram says it chose to soft-launch in Brazil due to its musical culture, enthusiastic Instagram userbase, and viscerally artistic traditions.
Facebook has a long history of stealing ideas. In 2017, the social network unveiled a shameless rip-off of Houseparty called Bonfire, which it discontinued after a couple of years. And in 2016, its Instagram subsidiary released a near-carbon copy of Snapchat’s stories, even giving it the same name as the product it ripped off.
None of this is inherently surprising, or even wrong per se. The entire social media ecosystem grew from startups building on the groundwork of their rivals. Facebook borrowed from MySpace…which borrowed from Friendster. Originality isn’t the factor that determines success, but rather execution.
And will Reels kill TikTok? Probably not, insofar as if TikTok stumbles, it’ll be because of other extraneous factors, like the current legislative scrutiny directed towards it by the U.S. Government, which is exceedingly wary of its growing popularity and Chinese origins.
TikTok also has the advantage of incumbency; it was propelled into popularity thanks to a massive multimillion-dollar marketing effort. It’s also designed to facilitate the kind of endless scrolling that keeps users hooked.
There’s also the fact that TikTok and Instagram are just different beasts. Instagram is where you post your sun-kissed selfies — #Blessed #NoFilter, etc. TikTok, on the other hand, is a heartland for silly and often self-deprecating content.
Given these two platforms are apples and oranges, it’s not clear how Instagram will effectively replicate the magic of TikTok.
*The answer, obviously, is no. Elliot died in 1965, nearly 50 years before the site first launched.
As far as video-sharing apps go, TikTok stands high above the rest.
The ultra-popular app has become one of the most talked-about services on the web. TikTok has spawned countless memes, viral challenges, and memorable trends.
But, despite its prominence, the app’s history is not well-known. To many, it seems like TikTok spawned out of nowhere and blew up nearly overnight. However, the origins of this online phenomenon are much older and intertwine with video-sharing apps Vine and Musical.ly.
What is “TikTok including Musical.ly”?
When you search for TikTok via Google, one of the first results is the Google Play app store. However, you may see search results where the name of the app varies between “TikTok” and “TikTok including Musical.ly.” This is due to TikTok’s absorption of Musical.ly, the video-sharing app that preceded it.
In November 2017, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, spent up to $1 billion to acquire Musical.ly. ByteDance then combined the two applications in August 2018.
However, as for the apps’ massive popularity and tendency to create viral challenges and memes, the trends all started with Vine.
What is Vine?
Unfortunately, the question is really “what was Vine.” While users thoroughly loved the app, it shut down in October 2016.
Twitter, which acquired Vine in 2012, discontinued the app. The choice to end such a well-liked app continues to irk Vine lovers, but the decision likely came due to efforts by many social media companies to create their own version of Vine.
Vine used a simple, elegant formula:Users recorded and posted their own videos, up to six seconds long, that looped over and over again. The format created a new type of humor rooted in concise, often off-beat comedic bits—much like the videos on Musical.ly and TikTok.
Twitter’s decision to end Vine also likely came as marketers began flocking to other, longer-form video-sharing sites. According to a 2016 article from the Verge, Vine’s creators “resisted monetization from the start,” which also led to its lack of financial viability.
After Vine ended, a number of similar apps began to crop up. The most prominent among them—apart from Snapchat, of course—was Musical.ly.
What is Musical.ly?
Musical.ly was a Shanghai-based startup that first launched in 2014. The social media platform was intended to mimic Vine, housing videos between 15 seconds and one minute long. While the app launched in both China and the U.S., it became far more popular among American teens.
Unlike Vine, which was almost exclusively original content and comedic bits, Musical.ly veered in the direction of lip-syncing videos. The app’s format encouraged users to upload short videos of themselves lip-syncing to songs or audio clips.
Musical.ly quickly gained a massive following, becoming the most-downloaded app in the iOS App Store in 2015. It continued to grow from there, reaching an impressive 70 million downloads in 2016.
In late 2017, ByteDance recognized the app’s potential and purchased it for as much as $1 billion. In August 2018, ByteDance transferred all the Musical.ly accounts to TikTok, essentially merging the two apps into one.
The move paid off: Over the past year, TikTok has become the premier location for short-form video uploads. In May, TikTok was the most-downloaded iOS app for the fifth consecutive quarter, and teens continue to flock to it.
After all that, as far as anyone can tell, TikTok is here to stay.
TikTok is an app known for its weird memes and trends. The latest one blowing up is all about hardware superstore Home Depot.
Users are dancing, vibing, and doing other hilarious, meme-able things to the Home Depot theme song. The hashtag #homedepot has more than 62 million video views on the app as of Wednesday.
Some videos have mashed the “me and the boys” and the “me and the homies” trend, too, where a bunch of people jokingly roll up at Home Depot with the jingle as their walk-in music.
Several TikToks are captioned with the company’s motto, “More savings. More doing.”
Other videos show users jamming to the theme song as if it were a top song on Spotify and even transforming it into a trap song.
The sudden obsession with the Home Depot doesn’t stop at TikTok. There is also a 10-hour loop of the theme song on YouTube to suit all meme-able needs.
The hashtag #homedepot has been trending on TikTok for almost three weeks, according to the A.V. Club, and caught the media’s attention recently as New York Times reporter Taylor Lorenz flagged various examples and Mel magazine published an explainer. No word yet on whether a Lowe’s jingle has sparked similar memes.
Maroon 5 agrees that the latest TikTok trend is good. Basketball players are having fun with the new challenge, which yes, involves Maroon 5. In the middle of playing, players will stop and prance off the court in conga line fashion as Maroon 5’s “Payphone” plays in the background.
Dave Jorgenson–who makes TikToks at the Washington Post if you need more journalism TikTok content in your life–tweeted a “Payphone” TikTok and wrote that “this TikTok trend might be my favorite so far.” Maroon 5 then responded.
In the comments, Jorgenson asked if Maroon 5 would like to star in a Washington Post TikTok, but the band has yet to respond.
The “Payphone” soundbite on TikTok has become dominated by basketball players trying out the trend. Most of the TikToks are filmed at practice or a pickup game, but three brave boys actually payphoned off the court in the middle of a game.
TikTok is popular among athletes who do challenges with their teams, but athletes have also used TikTok to share their “highlight reels” as part of another trend.
The “Payphone” TikTok trend is still going strong, and although it is Maroon 5-approved, Maroon 5 fans will have to wait and see if they make an appearance on TikTok anytime soon.
The “I’m baby” meme has evolved quite a bit online, from a text message typo to a Twitter meme that allowed people to revert back to infancy (at least mentally and emotionally) without judgement. “I’m baby” has now arrived on TikTok, where it’s being applied more literally.
In this iteration, users recreate photos from their childhood. Some are solo photos, some are with siblings and parents, and the trend has taken off in the last month.
Some people threw it back to actually being baby.
Pets got some love, too.
It’s one of the more wholesome TikTok memes of the last few months, and a reminder that sometimes the awkwardness never leaves you.
Sneaking snacks into the movie theater to avoid paying ungodly prices for a pack of M&M’s is a timeless tradition. And like everything else, Gen Z is going above and beyond. Many moviegoers throw candy in their purse or pockets, but TikTok users are wearing big hats to sneak candy into the theaters–or joking about it, at least–after one TikTok innovator figured out how to stash Skittles in his beanie.
TikTok user @applecrumbwill posted a video, asking his followers to “please just be honest, if you worked at the movie theater, would you or would you not, check under my hat for Skittles?”
Applecrumbwill, you have given TikTok the relatable content it needs. Other TikTok users were quick to duet his video filming their reactions absolutely losing it over the hat.
Now TikTok users have started using applecrumbwill’s voiceover to show off their own crazy hats potentially used for sneaking candy in. User @stickmanpat showed off his giant blue beanie that’s surely filled to the tip-top with candy.
User @thezeroyoudeserve posted a video in a large banana hat, which is sure to not raise any eyebrows.
And user @alligatorpancake had to stand across the room from his mirror to show off his hat to its full extent.
It’s truly impressive how innovative Gen Z can be when it comes to everyday tasks.
Many young people are on their way to careers entirely focused on the web—and making money on TikTok is no exception.
A recent survey from Morning Consult found that a whopping 86% of young people want to become social media influencers, CNBC reported. Careers built on platforms like Instagram, Twitch, and TikTok are becoming increasingly common.
As teens lay the groundwork to pursue these extremely modern careers, however, others are concerned by looming questions. Is a career on TikTok lucrative? How long will a job as an influencer last? Can you really make money just from goofy videos?
Without a traditional 9-to-5 workweek or regular pay schedule, it seems like a career on TikTok would be inconsistent at best. Despite lingering questions about such a career’s viability, people continue to flock to the app. Teens in particular hope to establish followings to carry into careers, which may or may not involve becoming an influencer.
Grab your calculator: Here’s how TikTok users are aiming to turn a social media hobby into a lucrative career.
How do people make money on TikTok?
There are a few ways to make money as a TikTok influencer.
The best and most available ways are to make advertising deals with brands and through direct “gifts” from users. Both methods demand dedicated time and a consistent TikTok presence to work, so only users who are prepared to put some real time into their accounts will see any return.
The better-known creators on the app often get offers from advertisers. Branded videos can make an influencer a big chunk of money: between $200 and $20,000, according to Influencer Marketing Hub. By creating videos that promote brands—by speaking directly about them, wearing their clothes, repping their products, or unboxing their goods, for example—users can get a big payoff.
Some TikTokers also receive monetary “gifts” from their fans. Once users have gone live—which requires 1,000 followers—their fans can view their live stream and reward them with gifts.
To purchase gifts, users can purchase in-app “coins.” Packs of coins range from 100 coins for $.99 to 10,000 for $99.99. Users then use these coins to purchase “gifts” that range in monetary value. To give a gift, just click “Give Gift” below the live stream. Then you can select which gift, from “Panda” to “Drama Queen,” to offer.
Another way to make money on TikTok is to take advantage of YouTube. Many TikTokers re-share their best videos and clips to YouTube’s much wider audience. Given YouTube’s established advertising system, it can be far easier to see a financial return on popular content.
How much money can a TikTok influencer make?
Here’s where your calculator comes in: TikTok is still a relatively young platform, so we don’t have many hard numbers on it yet. However, some of TikTok’s top influencers have tens of millions of followers and have turned their massive popularity into monetary returns.
Those users make money through a variety of methods, most of which don’t revolve entirely around TikTok. The most popular TikTok influencers find ways to send fans to their other social media profiles. The more widespread an influencer’s reach, the more likely it is that brands will extend an offer.
The most prominent TikToker, Loren Gray, is reportedly worth around $300,000. Still comfortably in her teenage years, Gray has raked in the big bucks through connecting her TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube pages. BabyAriel, another known TikToker, has a fortune estimated near $1 million, thanks to her careful use of TikTok to sell branded merchandise.
Turning social media into a career
As far as how to create a permanent career as a TikTok influencer, it’s hard to say. Some users likely hope to remain relevant on TikTok for decades, carefully using their calculators to continue raking in money and views. As influencers on YouTube—a much older platform—will tell you, however, it can be hard to keep up. Constantly creating content is a surprisingly difficult task.
For those who carve out a niche, TikTok has the potential to offer the longevity that some of YouTube’s more prominent creators have enjoyed. Gray, for example, turned her Musical.ly and TikTok fame into a massive social media presence and a career in music.
The most important thing for TikTokers to remember is that the internet is a big place. If you want to solidify expand your reach, you’ll need to create a foundation on sites other than TikTok. Sending followers to your Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter pages will help boost your overall online presence. This will give you a far more well-rounded base—and will be massively important if TikTok follows in Vine’s footsteps (RIP).
Whether or not you’re a TikTok fan, you’ve likely heard of the video-sharing app. Every major social media site, from Twitter to Instagram and Facebook, heavily features trending TikToks. The app itself surpassed 1 billion downloads earlier this year, and it has only gotten more popular since.
It’s not slowing down anytime soon, so people who are just starting out might want to settle in and learn a few things—like how to go live on TikTok, for example. While the social media app has become the premier location for recorded short-form videos, users also have the option to stream live.
One overarching question many users have, however, is how to go live on TikTok. While plenty of other apps—including Twitch, Instagram, and Facebook—offer live streaming options, TikTok’s passionate user base seems to prefer to stick to what it knows. The app does offer live streaming as an option, but it can be hard to figure out the kinks.
Start by finding the latest version of TikTok in the iOS or Google Play app store. Then, the app will list instructions to finalize the download. Find the profile button in the bottom-right corner and click on it. You can then click “sign up with phone or email” or the Twitter, Facebook, or Google logo to connect through your existing account.
If you connect through your phone number or email, you will then need to enter some personal information. Once you’ve entered your birthdate, finished with verification, and set up a password, your account will be ready.
When you log in, you will see a plus button at the bottom of the screen. After you click it, you should see a button that says “live” next to the “record” button.
TikTok live isn’t available to everyone
According to some users, the live streaming feature isn’t available to everyone on TikTok.
The feature was in its rollout phase earlier this year, so depending on when you last updated the app, that could be the culprit. In addition, users under 13 will not be able to go live, as it is against TikTok’s rules.
Users with fewer than 1,000 followers also don’t have access to the “live” button, though this varies from country to country. You can gain new followers through the traditional route—creating content—or you can go the easy route and snatch up fake followers.
TikTok also limits how many people can live stream at once, which varies across countries. If the “live” button is typically present on your account but disappears, it is possible you just need to wait a while.
In addition, TikTok has taken away some users’ ability to go live after they uttered a banned word or phrase. Avoid some of TikTok’s big no-nos, and you should have the feature again in no time.
Going live
Once you see the TikTok live button, you are ready to start your first live stream. All you need to do is tap the button, add an engaging title—one that avoids using any of TikTok’s banned words—and begin.
Utilizing trending hashtags is always a good way to pull in more viewers, as is engaging in popular challenges.
And just like that, you’re well on your way to TikTok stardom.
If you’ve never heard of TikTok, you’re officially out of the loop.
The video-sharing app has spread like wildfire online, gradually overtaking every corner of the web. As the company behind it continues to grow, and the young creators populating it dedicate more and more time to it, TikTok is becoming as recognizable as YouTube or Twitch. With name recognition comes questions, however, and we are here to answer the most pressing queries.
Everything you need to know about TikTok
What is TikTok?
Let’s start with the basics. TikTok users flock to the site to create short-form videos, often set to popular music. Many videos on the app feature regular people, usually teens, lip-synching and dancing to popular tracks. Other videos center around short comedic bits, much like Vine, and the app fills the void for lovers of the tragically deceased video hosting service.
TikTok has grown to become one of the largest short-form video sharing apps, but it wasn’t always so well-known. Back when it first launched in 2016, it was a little-known Chinese project called Douyin. It was rebranded into TikTok for U.S. users, and though the two apps are the same, they run on different servers to account for censorship laws in China. The app gathered steam after reaching the U.S. in 2017, but it didn’t gain a major following until the Musical.ly merger.
In August 2018, TikTok absorbed fellow video-sharing app Musical.ly. This skyrocketed the app to mainstream popularity, where it has enjoyed the spotlight for more than a year now. In February 2019, the app—in conjunction with its Chinese equivalent—reached one billion global downloads. Around 80 million of those downloads are in the U.S. alone, and that’s only two years into its lifespan.
TikTok’s headquarters are currently located in Los Angeles, but the company has several other offices around the world, including in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore, Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo. Its declared mission is “to inspire creativity and create joy” as “the leading destination for short-form mobile video.”
Who created TikTok?
Beijing-based tech company ByteDance first created Douyin in 2016. The company, which began in 2012, was recently awarded the title of most valuable startup with a worth valued at $75 billion. Douyin and TikTok are far from the company’s only projects. It owns a number of other mobile apps, including popular Chinese news platform Jinri Toutiao and TopBuzz.
Who owns TikTok?
The company behind TikTok, ByteDance, is owned by Zhang Yiming. The 36-year-old entrepreneur tends to avoid the spotlight, so very little is known about him. He graduated from Nankai University in 2005 with a degree in software engineering and worked toward several entrepreneurial ventures before ByteDance. According to his “about” page, Zhang “participated in or founded” both Kuxun, a Chinese travel and transportation search engine, and Jiujiufang, a real estate search portal.
In a 2015 speech at his alma mater, Nankai University, Zhang compared himself to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Travis Kalanick, the man behind Uber.
Zhang revealed a few key facts about himself in a 2015 Nankai University speech. He spent much of his college years building websites and doing tech work, which all likely aided him in creating his massively successful company. Zhang is also an avid reader, particularly of biographies.
How does TikTok make money?
Back in October 2018, Bloomberg reported that ByteDance had yet to turn a profit. The company is on track to rake in the big bucks, however, considering it was recently crowned the world’s most valuable startup.
Users can purchase in-app coins, which they can use to purchase gifts for their favorite creators. 100 coins, the smallest purchasable amount, will cost a user $.99. The largest number of coins available to purchase at once is 10,000, which is around $99.99 USD. Creators who receive in-app gifts often offer prizes in exchange, usually in the form of a mention, special attention online or a TikTok duet. An intelligence firm reported that TikTok users spent a whopping $3.5 million worldwide on various in-app purchases during the month of October 2018 alone. We can’t be certain how much the company makes on these financial exchanges, but assuming the company works somewhat like Musical.ly, it’s a lot. Musical.ly received 20 percent of each “tip,” which would stack up in no time.
There are also rumors that ad agencies are closely eyeing TikTok as an option. According to Money, splash ads on Douyin cost about $150,000 for a single day in 2018. They could be even more expensive now. Newsfeed ads were featured on Douyin for around $4 a click in 2018, outlining potential options for TikTok’s future financial gain.
Who is TikTok for?
TikTok is most enjoyed by people aged between 16 and 24, according to marketing agency Mediakix. Young users overwhelmingly flock to the app, which has caused ByteDance problems in the past. Preteens—or those under 13—are among TikTok’s most prominent users, despite technically going against the app’s rules. This lead to a recent lawsuit. The company agreed to pay $5.7 million in fines to the Federal Trade Commission for “collecting data from children under the age of 13 without obtaining parental consent,” according to Time.
In truth, TikTok is for anyone and everyone. Users of all ages enjoy the site, despite its user base veering heavily in the younger direction. TikTok’s reach is ever-expanding, too. The app is popular all over the world, from China and the US to India, Turkey, and Russia.
What are the downsides?
Despite, or perhaps due to, the overwhelming popularity of TikTok, several issues have cropped up in the past few years. The exploitation of young users, in particular, has brought negative attention to the app. As noted above, TikTok creators can make money through digital monetary “gifts,” sent to them by viewers. Much of TikTok’s audience is quite young, however, creating a problem for the company. Several young viewers have spent exorbitant sums of money on gifts, ultimately leading to a backlash.
The gathering of information from underaged users also landed TikTok in hot water recently. It adjusted the way its age restrictions work, aiming to make it safer for young users.
Bullying, censorship, and pedophilia
As the app continues to grow, a number of other concerns have cropped up. Lawmakers, recalling the negative effects Facebook had on the 2016 presidential election, have voiced concerns about TikTok’s potential to be used in a similar fashion. There have been allegations that the app removes or blocks videos supporting the Hong Kong protests, which TikTok denies. The company claims that its American user data is stored locally, and has no interference from Chinese censors. Nonetheless, the accusations loom over the ever-expanding app.
A number of other issues have continued to haunt the popular application. Bullying, a perpetual problem online, has reared its ugly head plenty of times on TikTok. More concerning, however, are the creepy adults that sometimes haunt TikTok videos. In conjunction with the occasionally concerning age of users, this issue could be the most pressing for TikTok. Reports of underaged users as young as nine accidentally sharing their private information has been making waves throughout the internet for months. To top it off, many of the more provocative videos posted there—again, often by young users—are soon rife with comments from creepy older viewers. As with YouTube, TikTok could soon develop an issue with pedophilia.
Even with all the problems, however, TikTok is firmly on the rise. It’s hard to say how the app will change as its reach expands even further, but one thing is certain. Barring any massive missteps, the popular app appears here to stay.
The internet brings us good things sometimes, like when the Clemson University quarterback Trevor Lawrence finally met his TikTok twin, a 16-year-old girl from Georgia.
Before Clemson’s game on Saturday in South Carolina, the football star met Bella Martina, the high school girl that started the trend of people sharing lookalike videos of Lawrence on TikTok.
When asked about the videos at a press conference, Lawrence said he’s seen a lot of them and thought they were funny. He specifically said that Martina “looks a lot like me” and even recorded a reaction video to one of Martina’s videos.
Before the big meetup, Martina told the Athletic that she would be nervous meeting him because she wasn’t sure how he’d react.
“I’d be like, ‘Hi! My name is Bella. You’ve seen my TikToks. We have the same face.’ I’d be so overwhelmed. I might just squeal,” she told the Athletic.
TikTok came on the social media scene relatively recently (2016), and teens have flocked to it. The short-form video app boasts 500 million users, most of them young.
TikTok has developed its own culture and communities within, and Rolling Stone writer EJ Dickson has been observing and reporting on them in detail. As a non-teen herself, she’s fascinated by the empowerment and deep social awareness that appears baked into Gen Z, thanks to their constant connectivity.
This week on 2 Girls 1 Podcast, Alli and Jen (actors who perform weird internet content on stage) talk to Dickson about her coverage of TikTok, the teen communities that form there, the trends of self-empowerment that run through the network, and the social media cesspools we can’t seem to escape.
Listen to episode 109 of #2G1P right here:
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A TikTok user made a video of his English teacher, who also sang lead on “Absolutely (Story of a Girl).” Turns out former Nine Days frontman John Hampson and the woman he wrote the song about are still together.
The TikTok video has caused some turmoil on Twitter. That’s because people who listened to the wildly popular song in the early 2000s are feeling old at seeing the rock idol living a quiet life as a regular dude in New York.
“Call The Hague, this is a generational war crime,” Katie Notopoulos tweeted.
The video shows Hampson talking to his wife in what looks like a school cafeteria. Then the video flips to a selfie video of the boy pointing to a screenshot of the song on YouTube.
“My english teacher use to be a singer and he wrote this song about his wife, who hes talking to in this vid,” @aliabidi_ wrote on his TikTok video.
Needless to say, Twitter users who had listened to the song about two decades ago were shocked.
Look the most important thing is he looks pretty good in that kid’s vid tbh
Hampson doesn’t try to hide his rock star past from his students. In fact, a YouTube video that was recently posted on Reddit shows him talking about his experience and singing the song to his class.
Reddit users loved the video saying he looked like a “great teacher and role model.”
Hampson talked about his teaching life in 2012 with Patch, a local media outlet in Wantagh-Seaford, New York. Teaching, he said, is not that different from being onstage.
“Whether I’m singing or teaching, I’m in front of an audience and it’s my job to hold that audience’s attention. I’m reading a room and making decisions on how to address that audience to inspire them,” Hampson told Patch. “It’s different tools with music and teaching, but the goal is the same.”
In 2000, the song reached No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.
Although it’s been around for almost a month, over the weekend, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and his campaign’s Panic! at the Disco dance went the wrong side of viral, with just about everyone shocked at the state of… well… everything.
That people were inspired enough by Buttigieg’s policies to break this dance out is one thing. That viral dance crazes are maybe the future of democracy is another. That Brendon Urie goes by Panic! at the Disco and is not considered a solo act is a problem for a whole other election.
Was this weekend the day that America fully subsumed itself in a cascade of dunk-tweets and self-recriminations about white identity?
No. Because we still have the youth, who have TikTok, and are roasting the hell out of Mayor Pete, his desire for a new brand of reach-across-the-aisle centrism, his controversial outreach to the Black community, and that dance.
On Nov. 9, user @antstorm123 posted a video in which he and some of the boys stand in a circle as a basketball is thrown in the air. The “challenge” is that no one can move out of the way of the falling basketball. Hence the caption, “How to get a concussion.”
For its part, TikTok has put a warning on the video: “The action in this video could result in serious injury.” But of course, that hasn’t stopped others from trying to copy it, though not always with a basketball.
A baseball seems much safer.
Then people started getting real dumb and throwing things like tricycles.
When TikTok user @marissabaileyy posted a video about the drama that nearly tore her friendship apart, it had an unexpected ending. Marissa and her BFF, she announced, were dating.
Marissa explained how she and her best friend Leah drifted apart when Marissa befriended a new girl at school. But when that friendship turned, “toxic,” Marissa and Leah reconnected at a birthday party. “And now seven months later… we’re gay,” Bailey said.
After a minute-long narrative about backstabbing and Snapchat arguments overlaid with photos of the friends, it was the plot twist that few saw coming. “I did NOT expect that whatsoever,” one user wrote.
The video, which now has over 8 million views on TikTok, took off as users shared and commented on what they thought was a heartwarming video. But more astute viewers noticed a hashtag on the post that called the authenticity of Marissa’s story into question: #takeajokeplease.
The video was later posted to Twitter by @blakersdozen, where at first it received positive reactions.
I learned more about personal essays from this one TikTok than from any class pic.twitter.com/PIWKdsEclt
— Mara “Get Rid of the Nazis” Wilson (@MaraWilson) November 21, 2019
But many had a change of heart after seeing the hashtags implying the gay comment was a “joke.” “Wow that’s horrendous,” Twitter user @nocturna1sect wrote.
Marissa, whose other TikTok videos show her participating in TikTok challenges and other regular teen activities, did not immediately respond to the Daily Dot’s request for comment.
Was the friend story with a romantic twist-ending just a ploy for likes? Itwouldn’t be the first time TikTok users pretended to be gay for clout.
Back in October, user @vulang posted a romantic video of him and another boy. Their video got a positive reaction until it was debunked by one of their classmates. One of the boys later said they had faked their relationship to poke fun of other couples.
The future is online. The internet’s shining stars—platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube—are taking over. These sites are quickly becoming main hubs of conversation, change, and growth with an incredible amount of users.
Currently, the fastest-growing platform is TikTok, the short-form video-sharing app everyone is talking about. However, as more users sign up, it’s becoming harder to stand out. Without a hefty following and plenty of potentially viral content, most users flounder in the background of the mega-popular platform.
So how can you, an unknown, get more followers? The internet promises plenty of paths to free TikTok followers, but you can’t trust everything—or most things, for that matter—that you find online.
Can you get free TikTok followers?
First, let’s tackle the most important question. Is it even possible to get free followers on TikTok?
A slew of shady sites litter the web, promising free TikTok followers through “fan generators” and other questionable methods. Since using these sites is akin to having unprotected sex with the internet, I highly recommend not going this route. A quick attempt to use one such site raised immediate red flags and strongly indicated that malware would come part and parcel with any “free fans.”
Instead of risking a potentially crippling virus, consider using a few clever workarounds to gain free TikTok followers, rather than going the “easy” route. While there doesn’t appear to be a (safe) way to download free fans, there are a few tips and tricks to quickly gain TikTok followers.
Sites that promise free TikTok followers
Searching through Google for tips and tricks to gain TikTok fame will almost certainly yield results for “free fan generators.” Several popular sites, such as TikTok Famous Club and Coolhack Site, might seem legit: They have the TikTok colors and logos and swear that users can obtain up to 30,000 free followers if they only participate in a few surveys or download an app or two.
Again, I cannot emphasize enough how dangerous sites like these can be. There are plenty of ways to obtain followers without potentially damaging your computer. Avoid sites that offer free TikTok followers, as there is little chance you’ll get anything but a virus out of them.
How to get free TikTok followers—without getting a virus
Follow popular accounts
There are a number of massively popular accounts on TikTok. Loren Gray, TikTok’s most prominent user, has a staggering 35 million followers. Finding pages like Gray’s—or any of TikTok’s other mega-popular accounts—is a good first step to gaining free TikTok followers of your own.
By going to these pages and following TikTok’s most popular users, you can attempt to gain their attention. Following and unfollowing multiple times is a recommended method to spark their interest, which will hopefully result in a follow back. Plus, thanks to their massive fan bases, TikTok’s top account holders will almost assuredly bring some of their own followers with them. Assuming they enjoy the content on your account enough to follow it, many of their fans will likely agree.
Commenting on popular videos can also help you gain free TikTok followers. Quippy, on-point comments are likely to get the attention of other users on the platform, as well as the poster of the video.
Maintain your profile
A carefully honed profile is an easy way to draw people in. There are a number of ways to make your TikTok profile stand out from the rest.
A relatively short, easy-to-remember username is much better than one that is longer and more complicated. Maintaining similar usernames across social media profiles will help as well, as it will encourage users to find your other accounts.
In addition, finding your niche and sticking with it will help establish your unique brand. Early on, imitating other videos and following trends will help you get noticed, but the more you develop your individual style the more genuine TikTok followers you’ll gain.
You also want to try to make authentic, relatable content. People love to see themselves in their favorite creators, so make sure to let your personality shine. However, you don’t want to stick with a single formula. TikTok is practically made for people with short attention spans, so tired, recycled content won’t keep you on anyone’s radar for long. Make sure to switch it up consistently and try new things. You won’t always succeed, but it will be worth it when you do.
Spread your reach
TikTok doesn’t currently have a direct route to monetization, so anyone hoping to make money off their content will need to go another direction. This can also help with gaining followers, particularly from massively populated sites like Instagram and YouTube. Rather than sticking exclusively to TikTok, make sure to spread your reach to other popular social media sites.
Sharing your content on other sites will help pull in followers that aren’t consistent TikTok users. Gaining subscribers on YouTube helps build your brand and can help you gain name recognition. Again, keeping the same username across accounts will help with this. As people start to recognize your content, having your fingers in multiple pies will lead to more likes, shares, and, ultimately, follows.
Viral challenges
Participating in viral challenges is one of the best ways to reach internet stardom. Hashtags and trending pages often surface viral challenges, even if the accounts have lower follower counts. In creating a popular video for a viral challenge, you can potentially end up on the front page of TikTok or as part of a trending Twitter hashtag.
When participating in a viral challenge, you can also use trending hashtags and phrases to pull in more viewers. Take advantage of that search volume, as people look for the best memes, goofs, and challenges to come from TikTok.
Collaborate with others
A good duet is a sure-fire path to virality, particularly if you can pull off a duet with an existing popular TikTok account. Even if you are collaborating with another unknown, however, videos with friends and family are often TikTok’s most popular uploads.
You can combine skills to create any number of popular videos. Lip-sync with your dad to make a charming, family-infused video. Dancing with a sibling, joking with friends, and recording a normal day in your life are all paths to an increased TikTok follower count. Viewers love to feel like they are really getting to know creators, so lean into that. Show them who you really are and share the people you love with them. Your followers will appreciate it.
Find a unique style
Apart from selecting and cementing a niche, there are several ways to make your content stand out. Unique video edits, in particular, can help push your uploads to the forefront. The TikTok app comes with a variety of tools to change and enhance your videos, but skilled Tokers can use additional software to give their videos a real boost.
You also want to post videos at high-volume times to increase the chance of your content being noticed. Daylight hours are always the best for posting new content, though you’ll want to keep in mind time changes, depending on where your target audience lives. TikTok’s “golden hours” are between 11 and 5, when the majority of users are active. You’ll also want to post videos with trackable consistency—at least twice a day. This gives you basic exposure and keeps your name on people’s pages.
Trends and viral challenges are often behind a TikTok video‘s rise to virality. Sometimes, however, a creator manages to make something wholly unique, that captures our collective attention even without a trending hashtag. And sometimes, it’s not a good thing.
Such is the case with a recent TikTok from a nurse, uploaded to Twitter on Tuesday, where it was promptly dragged by half of the internet.
The TikTok is pretty simple. It shows Danyelle Rose, a former Vine star who has transferred her popularity into TikTok, in a hospital gown. Clearly intended to portray a patient, the gowned Rose gasps for air. Then, a version of Rose in scrubs—clearly a nurse—begins to dance to the sounds of the patient’s “suffering.” The video is captioned with “We know when y’all are faking.”
The video quickly gained attention online, particularly from people who felt their medical struggles have been ignored or minimized by hospital professionals. “Someone notify me when she gets fired,” one commenter wrote. “This is trash.”
Most people tended to agree. Especially because Rose’s TikToks indicate that she’s actually a professional nurse.
I was seconds from fainting when a female "medical professional" like this, ROLLED HER EYES. I honestly think that was the only thing that kept me from dropping because she enraged me. It took them 3 days to regulate my heartrate after they realized I was actually in crisis. smh
— Y'all Fell for the Divide and Conquer... Smdh. (@harley_nu) November 21, 2019
*The nurse while Serena Williams almost died after giving birth
Many people shared medical horror stories of times they’d visited a medical professional and been brushed off. Most unanimously agreed that Rose’s TikTok was a singularly bad take. “My mother had to have 2ft of her small intestines placed back & was near death because of an undiagnosed hernia rupture,” one commenter shared. “She went to the doctor a year earlier complaining about the pain & they didn’t believe her.”
They were far from the only one.
... my mother had to have 2ft of her small intestines placed back & was near death because of an undiagnosed hernia rupture. she went to the doctor a year earlier complaining about the pain & they didn’t believe her.
My point is even if you feel as if a patient is "faking" or "overexaggerating" take their word as they say!!! Why risk someone's life or someone's experience for the simple fact that you think you know everything@OUMedicine!!!!
Despite all the anger, there were those who defended Rose’s video. “People are really offended by this tweet,” one commenter said. “You gotta walk on eggshells in this generation. Reading the comments this went from a joke to ‘black woman (sic) die in labor all the time because of people like this’ I wasn’t even thinking that deep.”
Maybe because it's callous for a health care professional to make jokes about ignoring patient's needs.
— HorRory back from the dead (refollow) (@_Bibleblackbelt) November 21, 2019
They deal with people who are faking all the time. Stop coming for her neck Nursing is hard af and people who don’t care don’t go through all the schooling necessary. She’s just having fun with something that happens all the time and is more than likely on a break. GTFO
Every one of us who has had a nurse ignore or insult us is the butt of this joke. I've been left sobbing w/o pain meds after surgery & the nurse who laughed at me as I cried all night tried to get me to take her side when the dr pointed out pain meds had been ordered on my chart.
Much of the anger Rose’s tweet received came after she played coy in the comments section. Despite all the anger her TikTok stirred, Rose appeared to make light of many of the stories shared in the comments. That also upset people.
Thankfully, a few good things came from Rose’s TikTok. One Twitter user even said the video encouraged her to “not quit school, because the world needs more compassionate nurses.” Another user shared a thread of people who’ve previously been denied medication or treatment they sorely needed.
Please listen to patients. Even if you feel we MIGHT be lying, check us out anyway to be 100% sure. Research endometriosis. I have had so many horrible nurses treat me like hell because of it.
Also, a lot of people aren't pretending but performing. I certainly have to perform pain or distress when I want medical professionals to take my symptoms seriously, because my natural tone and body language don't read as pain or digress for most people.
The United States Army is assessing the security of TikTok, the popular app, after concerns were raised by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), according to a new report.
Reuters reports that Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said on Thursday that Schumer asked him to investigate if there would be security risks if the Army continued used the app in trying to recruit teenagers.
“National security experts have raised concerns about TikTok’s collection and handling of user data, including user content and communications, IP addresses, location-related data, metadata, and other sensitive personal information,” Schumer wrote to McCarthy earlier this month, according to the news outlet.
The Army has been using TikTok since last year.
This isn’t the first time there have been concerns raised about the app and its developer.
Schumer and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) wrote a letter to the director of national intelligence in October expressing concerns about national security and the popular app. The two senators said they wanted an investigation into whether TikTok, which is owned by a company that operates out of China, could allow for data of U.S. citizens to get into the hands of the Chinese government.
Earlier this month, the company said in a blog post that it stores U.S. user data in the United States with a backup redundancy in Singapore, adding that its data centers are “located entirely outside of China.”
The internet is always ready to die over a good celebrity lookalike, but when someone pops up who looks like the actual lovechild of two characters from the same show? Chills.
TikTok user @1m4p13ce0fsh1t, whose real name Ali, is basically a face meld of Victoria Justice and Avan Jogia, who both starred in the popular Nickelodeon show Victorious at the start of the decade–and whose characters were often shipped together. When Ali called attention to these unnerving similarities in one of her videos, it didn’t take long for everyone to collectively freak out.
Ali’s video starts out with popular audio that another TikTok user created in 2019 to mock movies.
“It all started when my mom met my dad and they fell in love and they had me,” the voiceover can be heard saying, while a photo of Justice and then Jogia appear on the screen–a popular TikTok meme format.
“Hi, I’m Ryan, and my life is kinda crazy,” the voiceover says as Ali appears on the screen.
Digging into her TikTok account, fans were quick to discover that this not-Victoria Justice teen actually has a whole series of videos capitalizing on how similar she looks to the former Nickelodeon star. These often involve reenactments of scenes from Victorious, utilizing audio from the actual series and roping in other TikTokkers to play additional roles.
And to add an extra layer of wtf-ery, one of the girls who sometimes jumps in on the videos looks way too much like Ariana Grande, who played Cat in the original series.
Is the next evolution of TikTok just people who look like celebrities reenacting old shows? There are worse things that could happen to a popular social media platform!
It’s hard to say what celebrity lookalikes or creepy combos are lurking on TikTok waiting to reveal themselves and their uncanny resemblances to the world, but we’re certain this fake mini-cast of Victorious isn’t alone…
Users with fewer than 1,000 followers also don’t have access to the “live” button, though this varies from country to country. You can gain new followers through the traditional route—creating content—or you can go the easy route and snatch up fake followers.
(@blakersdozen) 
(@Tianna____) 
HorRory
back from the dead (refollow) (@_Bibleblackbelt) 
Nursing is hard af and people who don’t care don’t go through all the schooling necessary. She’s just having fun with something that happens all the time and is more than likely on a break. GTFO
(@DisabledPlumbob) 
⚧ (@disabilisaur) 
(@adriftinwords) 
