How Tik Tok is Taking Over During Covid

So May has swiftly come around and it's fair to say that 2020 has been fairly awful so far. It's been a bitter cocktail made with a measure of environmental disasters with a swig of political uproar, and a double-shot of Covid-19. With all these horrors mounting ever-higher, to what source of comfort or relief can we turn to to help us endure all the anxiety and inconvenience of our "new" daily lives? Tik Tok.

It's the perfect mixture of creativity, social exposure, and superficial productivity

In general, the views that people have on the now-largely-popular social media video-content app are fairly mixed. Tik Tok really does seem to be the marmite (or vegemite, depending on your location) of the app store. You either love it, or you hate it. Despite this, more and more people are turning to the app for some kind of boredom relief. Nowadays, there isn't a day where I open Instagram and don't see at least several Tik Tok videos created by my friends being haphazardly plastered all over their stories and feeds. The reactions to these videos consist of everything from "lol the best" to "this sucks" to people tagging their besties so they can superficially laugh together about whatever topic is depicted (omg @mybestfriend this is like so totally us last summer!!1 lmaooo) and so on.

By this point it's very difficult to avoid Tik Tok unless you sever your ties with social media altogether. So while opinions on the app are mixed, I'm here to ponder a few reasons as to how the app has become so popular in these dark times.

It passes time

With several countries drawing up new rules and regulations everyday for how people should socially-isolate, it is hardly surprising that we are turning to forms of social media for relief in growing numbers. A lot of us, myself included, are just stuck at home, avoiding the virus and social damnation, with very little to do. Yes I could clean my room, or yes I could work on perfecting my banana bread recipe or yes I could draw up a plan for a new start-up company, but all of that requires a hell of a lot of energy. And honestly, with so much fear and uncertainty swirling the atmosphere right now, many of us are struggling to motivate ourselves to do much of anything.

Tik Tok is social media- it's easy to use, easy to access, easy to create, and easy to spend/waste time on. Hours can be reduced to mere minutes while you sit at home waiting for lockdown to be over so you can go back to your regular routine of your 9-5 job followed by painting the town all shades of red with your friends. Apps like Tik Tok are really helping us to distract ourselves from all the horrible truths of the world currently; it allows us to enter this numb state of blissful unawareness and honestly, right now I think that's what a lot of us need.

It's a creative outlet

How does one create a Tik Tok? What is the genius that goes behind the craft of brainstorming, staging and producing this content? For most of them, it simply seems to go from A (I have this idea) to B (I'm recording my idea aaaand done!). Film something timed to some jazzy, topically-appropriate music and you're laughing. Even if you don't consider yourself to be a particularly creative person, everyone needs to burn off their creative energy in some way. Just sitting at home all day organising and reorganising our wardrobes doesn't offer many opportunities to do so. So apps like Tik Tok are allowing us the chance to utilise a creative outlet in a fairly painless way.

Of course there are many other activities one could do to achieve a similar effect; you could take up embroidery or paint a watercolour masterpiece, but sadly most of these activities require having a level of pre-existing creative skills in that area (unless you want to sit for hours mastering the skill from scratch, which most of us don't really want to if we're honest). Tik Tok however is a creative outlet that plays on pre-existing skills that you had pre-covid-19, our knowledge of memes and trends and our knowledge of filming very basic videos. It's a creative outlet that can be utilised by a majority of people, therefore in these times it seems to be thriving.

Everyday I see more and more individuals leaving our currently troubled reality to seek solace in Tik Tok.

It's fulfilling

If I were to describe Tik Tok in pragmatic terms I would say it's the perfect mixture of creativity, social exposure, and superficial productivity. So on another Monday afternoon in quarantine 20 year old Lucy could be getting a head-start on her reading for her next university term, but why would she do that when she could spend 20 minutes recreating a Tik Tok from a celebrity doing a certain dance routine to get the same feeling of fulfilment and gratification. Every Tik Tok can be seen as a mini-project. They are simplistic but there is still a process to completing them, so it helps people feel like they actually did something somewhat productive with their time. The fact that the fruits of their labour can now be spread across other platforms makes it all 10 times better, as Lucy can share her video on her Instagram and receive all those gratifying likes and "lol" story replies that make her feel validated and confirm it was a productive Monday afternoon.

You may have noticed that I previously stated Tik Tok provides a "superficial productivity". I said "superficial" because I feel that the gratification Lucy may receive from completion of her video would be short-lived and therefore could be questionably genuine. Tik Tok is a kind of content machine; by the time you churn out one you feel like you need to churn out another to sustain positive feelings of satisfaction. Though in these times even a little spike of gratification is so important and so necessary to ensure we maintain optimism, as it's incredibly easy to be too hard on yourself. There's so much we all want to achieve and do but feel naturally limited, therefore we should take these little victories to count even more. So, while I called it "superficial" I can not discredit its importance in this modern context.

It allows people to feel connected to the trends

The key to being successful on Tik Tok, like most social medias, is largely in ensuring you focus on and follow the trends. Users follow trends, so adhering to them will allow more users to find you and follow you. It's basic social media strategy. Following trends may not make you unique but it certainly seems to make you desirable, and therefore follow-able. It's so easy to criticise trend-followers as being unoriginal, but in current times following trends seems even more appealing as trends connect you to other people the most. Recreating a certain type of performance piece that you've seen 1000's of other people, including celebrities, do on Tik Tok allows you to feel more connected to that virtual community and demonstrate your contribution to it.

Especially now during times of isolation, people want to feel like they are part of the bigger picture more than ever. In the normal world, this want may have been subsidised by simply watching internet personalities take part in the trends, or even simply discussing the trends over a latte in Starbucks with a pal. But now as we are limited to what we can do in our lives outside, people are actively acting on these trends more than before. Now, normality can lie within the trends.

Doing them shows we are still socially relevant and aware of what shapes social media.

It's accessible

As I briefly mentioned earlier, Tik Tok, relative to other content-based social media, is much simpler to contribute to than others. The atmospheres of similar content-based platforms (e.g. Youtube and Instagram) feel very different. Creating successful content for Youtube is not easy; you should have a solid idea, a clear target audience for your content, a wicked charisma, some relatively good filming equipment, and a relatively good knowledge of how to edit videos. All this takes time and commitment and consistency. Instagram is a little more user friendly, but ensuring success on Instagram means also having a consistent upload schedule, a very clear knowledge of what market you're catering to, and how to use devisive tools (like hashtags and locations) to make your content flourish.

Tik Tok is far simpler than that! It appears it was designed to allow creators to contribute anything no matter how amateur or poorly edited, there is less of a "polished standard" than on other networks. Often most of the funniest or most charming Tik Toks are the ones that have a more "homemade" vibe, that allow people to connect to them in a relatable fashion. That's the USP, that anyone can do it. Youtube also claims to be a platform crafted by all of its creators, but the level of professionalism and polished content you get nowadays from famous Youtube stars makes the platform seem so much more elevated than it's competitors.

With Youtube and Instagram the line between us (the audience) and them (the creators) seems very clear and defined, but with Tik Tok those margins seem to blur. People feel happy when they see a funny 20 second Tik Tok that is simply a girlfriend's reaction to her boyfriend walking around the house naked, because they feel like they could create the same successful "amateur-level" content if they really wanted to. It's inclusive.

Especially in a time where daily life feels just a little more difficult and inconvenient, everyone likes to feel that they could contribute to this social media storm in the quick, carefree way Tik Tok provides them.

So while Tik Tok is slowly consuming the social media universe we know and love, why not consider giving it a go if you haven't already? It can't be a bad thing to channel some of your currently-restricted energy into producing something a little fun, lighthearted, and creative! Plus it can be quite rewarding if you have nothing better to do.

Finally I want to say that while the comforts of our daily lives have been somewhat compromised, everyone please try to stay positive and stay safe. Crucially, try not to be too hard on yourself if you don't have the energy to be productive while in isolation. It's so important now, more than ever, to have a fair and reasonable perspective of what you can realistically achieve in this time; do not waste time comparing yourself to others and safe healthy.