No. You Can’t Keep Ignoring TikTok
By Leslie Price
The Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial began and concluded in less than three months. But that’s all it took for the impact of powerful social media platform TikTok – and its ability to drive hours and hours of short-form video views for its over one billion users – to become abundantly clear to me. As Aja Romano writes for Vox, “The Depp-Heard trial…has proven to extremists that if you rally around the right beloved public figure or institution, blanket them in a protective sphere of outrage and misinformation, and weaponize fandom culture — already so prone to ideological radicalization and irrational groupthink — you can successfully push whatever media narrative you want into the mainstream. There’s no coming back from this. The actual trial verdict is all but irrelevant now.”
I’ve refrained from consuming content about the trial, both due to a lack of time and a gut instinct that the coverage would affect me too negatively. But it feels impossible to avoid its rough outlines, and the opinion commentary that’s followed. It’s escaped the walled gardens of our social media apps and has sprawled into the “real” world, popping up on television and in conversations with acquaintances. (And because the jury wasn’t sequestered, it’s hard to imagine they haven’t had a similar experience.)
As Amanda Hess wrote for The New York Times last week in a piece titled “TikTok’s Amber Heard Hate Machine, “The internet livestreaming of the trial has created its own virtual sport.” She goes on to explain how Johnny Depp’s choice to hold the trial in Virginia, which allowed it to be filmed for public consumption, plays to the strengths of video-first social platforms. It’s an endless font of material to be clipped, meme’d and dissected, true-crime style. Of course, TikTok isn’t the only platform at fault here – Hess also mentions YouTube – but TikToks on the topic are garnering literally billions of views.
As you get older, it can be tempting to avoid or belittle new tech – but it’s important to understand that TikTok shouldn’t be minimized and written off as a place for cutesy dances and animal videos. It’s swaying cultural consciousness, and it’s also affecting the way products are marketed and sold to us (and to our kids).
Slate’s ICYMI podcast tackled the power of the platform recently with the true story of how longtime makeup guru Bobbi Brown’s foundation went TikTok viral thanks, in part, to a somewhat secret social media-monetization company.
As Brown herself said on the podcast, “It’s so weird. I have been doing what I’m doing for over 30 years. And now I go into the supermarket, or I go to Restoration Hardware, and people stop me and say, ‘I saw you on TikTok.’”
The takeaway from the episode is that content creators are posting rave reviews on the app for money, but not necessarily adding disclosures to their videos (a big no-no). As one of the hosts of the podcast said, “this is a story about a trillion-dollar industry, and the way the mechanics work behind the scenes – the ways in which products are marketed and sold to us without us ever realizing we’ve been sold.” This can be an embarrassing realization for even the most savvy among us; who hasn’t been swayed by rave reviews online?
We’re more easily tricked into believing because video content is so much more convincing than the written word or even a photo. As The Information explains, “Unlike text, video media operates on two parallel pathways, conveying explicit information (the kind found in speech or writing) and implicit information (social cues like the TikToker’s clothes and hairstyle, or emotional affect from music) at the same time.” It also helps that so many of these creators feel relatable. It’s not like watching a newscaster, who is dressed and primped for television. These are normal people who look like normal people.
TikTok is sucking up all the oxygen in the social media space, easily outcompeting its rivals. This potentially spells doom for those who have built followings on other apps like Instagram, as exemplified in this recent piece from Eater about food influencers struggling to adapt. Its growth and influence is also affecting other industries: entertainment, music, psychology, the list goes on and on.
Even though I’ve read and heard about many people taking social media breaks, or deleting apps off their phones, the numbers don’t lie — plenty of us are consuming this content. It’s not all bad; there is entertaining stuff on TikTok (it’s honestly endless, bottomless) and lots of smart and informed experts. But the platform rewards constant posting, and in the pursuit of a fanbase and monetizable opportunities, creators churn out videos with little time for and attention to fact-checking, vetting, or disclosing a conflict of interest (or that their video is a paid ad spot). And the platform’s ephemeral nature, and its inscrutable For You algorithm, can make tracking down the source of a thought or soundbite impossible. This can leave a user with reams of dubious information and little to no recall of where it came from. Seems like a problem – what do you think?