TikTok : A Silly Craze, Or Something More?
“I will never write an article on TikTok!” — “Me, 10 seconds before being assigned to write an article on TikTok.
Oh no, how did I end up here? How am I supposed to write an entertaining article about TIKTOK of all topics!? Relax, stay calm, you’re not that old, you are not a grumpy old man yet, mate. It's probably not THAT bad, right?
You, yes you! You reading my article because you-are-bored-and-should-be-doing-something-productive-instead-but-aren’t-because-you-suffer-from-chronic-procrastination-disorder, let us explore this new age fad together!
Okay. So what in the world is TikTok?
TikTok (Douyin in China land), the world’s fastest growing app is what rose out of a merger deal between Byte-Dance, a Chinese tech conglomerate, and Music.ly. The app was initially designed to be a “learning app” which would have contained short videos on various topics, a stark contrast to what it ended up being: The site now harbours videos of lip-syncing to music, cute pet videos, pretty girls doing skits and a myriad of many other types of short videos.
Cute girls you say?
The platform initially went viral with the tween audience’s incredibly small attention span with their “innovative” 15 seconds long lip sync videos. Like anything else in the Interweb, memers were quick to invest in its meme potential and spew out many high-quality memes that now define the internet pop culture.
Subscribe to Pewdiepie, am I right?
Many of the famous meme’s include the “Hit or Miss” sync by Nyannyan, the “I want to be Tracer” by Fake Gamer Girl or the deep fried “Ladies and Gentlemen we got them!” template.
Wait, so TikTok isn’t just cringe-filled middle-school kids syncing to mainstream Bollywood songs?
No, TikTok is in fact, a thriving social media with its own culture and style, an evolution of Vine. Naturally, like anything in society that's popular, a lot of people hate the platform. But under the facade of a generic popular app is a robust tool that can help content creators express their creativity to the masses.
India has a very active TikTok following too, with millions of active users and just as many popular content creators, such as the pretty Jannat Zubair and the musically talented Manav Chhabra.
That’s all well and good, but shouldn’t these kids be studying hard to get a good job? -Someone’s Aunty probably.
While TikTok isn’t in itself a monetizable venture, many Indians have started using it to grow their fanbase and strike brand deals with many prominent companies. One notable example includes Faizal Shaikh and co (mr_faisu_07), who, with their enormous fanbase, leverage their popularity to sell their songs and other merchandise. Faizal Shaikh’s main source of income is sponsorships, paid reviews and promotions. His monthly average income is allegedly around approximately 80,000 to 1,00,000 Rs!
While money is amazing, TikTok also helps build incredibly strong personal communities that transcend the cyberspace into the real world. When the Indian TikTok’er Danish Zehen passed away in a motor accident, thousands of fans turned up for his funeral, a show of how strongly his fans were attached to him. So TikTok is an amazing tool to boost your blip in the world.
Wow! Perhaps I was wrong about TikTok after all!
Yep! And this is exactly why Paperkin organized a Tik Tok contest recently. Here’s the entry that won (Click the link below the image to watch the video on Instagram!)
So to wrap things up, we at Paperkin would like to thank each and every participant who took part in our contest, regardless of whether they were featured here or not. We really enjoyed judging through the submissions: many funny, many of them incredibly talented, and pretty much every one of them were amazing!
