Hello from the Goods Newsletter twice a week! On Tuesday, reporter of Internet culture Rebecca Jennings use this space to update you all about what’s happened in the world of TikTok. Is there anything you want to see more of? Less of? Different from? Email [email protected], en subscribe here for the goods newsletter.
I’ve been trying to lay my finger on why Instagram Reels sucks so badly. The feature – a rather shameless clone of TikTok – launched on August 5, hidden inside the Stories camera and makes Instagram’s already confusing Explore page even more so.
No one else seems to enjoy it either: the New York Times called it “a dud” because of its lack of fun video editing features or useful discovery mechanisms; my colleague at Verge, Julia Alexander, notes how difficult it is to find Reels herself on Instagram. As one user in India told CNN, after TikTok was banned in the country, “There is no one who can get close to TikTok.”
you are weird when you see rules on instagram
– ♚ (@ervin_texta) August 14, 2020
There are a million reasons why Instagram Reels feels boring for regular TikTok users and regular Instagrammers. But I think the root of the problem is this: Almost all content is of blue checks.
“Blue checks” is a kind of derogatory term for people who are “verified” on social media, the caste of celebrities and aspirant celebrities and not-at-all celebrities (like journalists) for whom online placement is less of a personal hobby is and more than an extension of her job. I can not just continue to retweet collusion theories because I am a reporter, and celebrities can not suffer around with embarrassing Instagram comments because it makes national news. In short, blue checks have more to lose, so they are nowhere as creative as they are strange.
Which means that blue checks, in general, do not place the kind of content that makes TikTok – or indeed any platform – beautiful in the first place. I do not see TikTok for Jason DeRulo’s thirsty attempts at viral fame, I see it because the random nobodies who make up the For You site have built a whole new language of comedy and video art.
Instagram Reels has replaced these wildly entertaining nobodies with professional life influencers, people who post brand-safe outfit transformation memes that peaked on TikTok six months ago. It’s not to say there’s no audience for it, but for a generation accustomed to watching the best videos, no matter who they came from, it’s the same résumé-approved content that Instagram has in ‘ t makes first place boring.
It’s also the same problem that persists on another recently hyped TikTok knockoff, but for different reasons. Triller, who has splashy famous investors and hired TikTok star Josh Richards to act as chief strategist, is trying to be the “adult version” of TikTok. If the app is any indication, this basically just means that just about everyone on the Thriller homepage is a verified user (Blac Chyna, Lele Pons, and Donald Trump all appeared on my feed within about a minute of scrolling) .
Both Instagram Reels and Triller have used their networks of influencers and celebrities to create content in the hope that millions of regular people will follow. TikTok tried the same thing, in the beginning (Cardi B and the Jonas Brothers were paid short to participate), but the reason it stepped up was not because Will Smith created an account. It was because young, creative children were drawn to the editing features and an algorithm that made the virality of the night possible. By prioritizing the blue controls, none of the biggest alternatives will be able to replicate what TikTok is worth looking at.
TikTok in the news
- My colleague Shirin Ghaffary wrote an extensive explorer about why TikTok is considered a national security threat (hint: it has everything to do with the relationship between Trump and China and nothing to do with the app itself). TikTok now has until November 12 to break away from its Chinese parent company.
- Should that actually happen, the founder of a UK-based TikTok collective writes in the Guardian how a TikTok ban would hurt children who have built massive prosecutions on the app. While it’s hard for anyone to ‘go viral’ with 8,000 followers on Instagram – there is a clear line between who is and is not influential – people can get millions of views on their content on TikTok, regardless of their followers count, he writes.
- More than a third of TikTok’s 49 million daily users are 14 or younger, according to company data controlled by the Times, raising questions about whether the company is doing enough to protect them. (Musical.ly, the app that was once TikTok, was fined $ 5.7 million in 2019 by the FTC for settling allegations that it was protecting online child protection online.
- We have a new candidate for the worst person on TikTok.
Meme watch
If 2019 was the summer of VSCO girls, then 2020 will be the summer of the ‘main character’. Since May, TikTokers, most of their young wives, have been making videos in which they, ironically or otherwise, as the protagonist of their lives, do things that a stereotypical girl can do in an indie movie, such as lay in the middle of the street or hop in a random Uber and vaguely announce “I’m going home.”
There’s a feeling of longing and distress in the mother – “drinking from a wine glass and looking out over the balcony so that everyone on this beach knows I’m the main character,” read the title of one, while one of the most popular is videos repeating just the sentence “give me attention” – but there is also a handy life reading here. As another popular audio portal advises: ‘You need to start romanticizing your life. You need to start thinking of yourself as the main character, because if you do not, life will go on for you, and all the little things that make it wonderful will go on without you noticing. ‘
One Last Thing
This mom’s tutorial on old-school dance moves taught me more than 15 years of public education.
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