The Fascinating World of TikTok by a Gen Z
TikTok — a bottomless pit with infinite possibilities. You could be watching videos of someone’s pet or skits of (mostly) relatable scenarios, but before you know it you are transported to the world of very weird viral trends and slang that even I as a Gen Z person did not understand until I searched it up on Urban Dictionary.
To be fair, I only started using the app earlier this year because my lecturer wanted us to create TikTok videos for one of the modules. TikTok originally did not catch my attention as to me it was another Vine and Musical.ly (TikTok’s former name before it rebranded into what it is now), which I briefly knew of and had seen some clips but never explored.
Despite TikTok’s exploding popularity, I was also on the fence as I heard a lot of conflicting views on the application itself. Ironically, quite a number of my peers find TikTok a pool of cringefest, while my siblings, who are at least in their mid-twenties, thoroughly enjoy spending hours scrolling through the application. In fact, it feels as though I have seen more negative views on TikTok than positive ones. It probably does not help that my first impression of TikTok is that it is an extremely weird place, like how a video of McDonald’s chicken nuggets and fries posted by my sibling somehow got over thousands of views. Suffice to say, it was a mind-blowing experience for both of us.
But before I knew it, a close friend of mine and I started to send each other TikTok videos as a form of communication instead of having normal human conversations like any other person would with their friends.
No context whatsoever, just 10 TikTok links in a row.
Like any other social media platform, there are both the bad and the good. It’s easy to focus on the negative aspects of TikTok because of its sheer influence, such as the “Devious Licks” challenge being the most recent example in the local scene. It originated from the United States, where you either steal or vandalize school property, except our brave and courageous culprits over here went to take down a government property instead. Of course, said actions ultimately led them to an investigation. There was also the Coronavirus challenge last March, where you go to a toilet bowl and lick it. I was not actively using TikTok then, but it still haunts me to this day.
Regardless, after spending months on the application, I can say that it is definitely not all bad. Because of how accessible TikTok is, you get to see snippets of everyone’s lives around the world, even if it is in the format of a meme. There are also the aspects of Tiktok being able to track your preferences and curate your experience through its algorithm — which depending on the person, is a great thing.
I would be lying if I deny that TikTok is a cultural reset. I don’t think I need to even mention the sheer grip the app has on today’s generation. Popular songs can now be dubbed as that TikTok song rather than the title itself. One prime example is the “I Hear Your Heartbeat to the Beat of the Drums” challenge, a line from Kesha’s song, “Die Young”, where a group of people would be standing outside doors of probably strangers’ apartment rooms and then “knock” (more like break) them with their feet as hard as possible after said line plays.
However, something has always bugged me even before I started using TikTok.
What makes TikTok so different from other social media platforms that it managed to grab the hearts of most Gen Z today?
Personally, I think it is not only TikTok’s all-in-one simple recording and editing tools but also how hyper-engaged people can be on this app. You can post anything, ranging from your hobby to literally anything else (like that McDonald’s video my sibling posted), and you are guaranteed to get a couple of views. The entertainment value despite its short digestible videos is also off the charts, as there’s usually an unexpected twist at the end.
In my personal experiences using TikTok, what stood out to me as someone who does not find much appeal in the likes of Instagram was accessibility. There are so many different “bubbles” that you can explore without effort, whether it is something that you like or it caught your attention, that you won’t know what to expect next.
At the end of the day, TikTok is just another form of social media that allows us to distract ourselves from our current lives. I love the creative and wacky ideas that people come up with for their TikTok videos, and how their randomness seems to always enrapture your attention to a point that, before you know it, it’s already been four hours and you’ve done nothing but scroll through your For You Page.
