What TikTok Can Teach Us About Writing
“It’s just a bunch of dumb people dancing.”
“This app is absolute nonsense,” I told myself as I begrudgingly set up an account. “It’s just a bunch of dumb people dancing.”
TikTok is blowing up. As the fastest growing social media platform, it’s hard to deny that they get something right. But for us creatives and intellectuals, it’s easy to write the app off as just a bunch of pandering, lowest-common-denominator bullshit.
I certainly took this approach. I scoffed at the idea of joining the app. I was better than that.
However, I’m trying to get signed to a modeling agency. As such, it's important that I grow my following on social media. Agencies like to see a following. I fought it for as long as I could, but it became inevitable: I was going to have to make a TikTok account.
So I signed up, recorded a silly little video of me in a leather jacket, overlayed a horrendously annoying song over it, and away we went.
Learning the game
So here I am, a writer awash in a sea of moronic videos. I figured it would be pretty easy to go viral considering my superior intellect. All I had to do was pay attention to the trends. There was a simple code. I just had to crack it and ascend to stardom.