Tik Tok: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Video app Tik Tok was launched September of 2017, and in that time has become a viral phenomenon popular among millions of teenagers and young adults, as well as various celebrities. In essence, the app seems to be a response to the shutdown of viral video app Vine, which found popularity among teens for seven-second, comedic videos created by users. Tik Tok is also entirely user-created content, but the videos can be far longer than Vine allotted, which allows for (in some cases) more creativity. However, the app is far from perfect, and this lack of refinement presents certain issues.

The creativity aspect of Tik Tok is (sometimes) refreshing. The app, like most social media, provides an outlet for individuals to share specific talents they have to a broad audience, be it comedy, art, cosplay, magic tricks, or singing. If well executed, it can be very entertaining and fun to see an artist’s work get recognition or a comedic video. The app provides various editing features for content creators to utilize, from filters to video cutting to sound effects. Some aspects of the editing can be very ham-fisted, though, as the effects are entirely controlled by tapping or dragging with your finger. Other parts, though, can be quite useful, such as the ability to automatically synchronize a video with a certain part of a song. 

Content-wise, for every good or well-executed video there are thousands of poorly done, insensitive, or just plain offensive videos. Tik Tok screens for offensive, violent, or dangerous content, but this is entirely ineffective. It oftentimes leads to videos with nothing wrong with them being taken down, while the truly offensive content remains. A perfect example of this is content from user JinnKid. His line of real-world parody videos of non-playable characters from the massively popular video game Skyrim gained millions of views and received high praise for the accuracy of the depictions. The videos contained no foul language, simulated swords with rulers, and were done with purely a comedic spirit, and yet Tik Tok removed some of them based on the fact that they “depicted dangerous situations.” Meanwhile, actively racist and violent videos entirely fly under the radar of whatever algorithm is used to determine content requirements.  It can be unfair to both creators and consumers that genuine content is sometimes repressed for no reason.

Tik Tok, while being an excellent place for users to showcase talents and gain positive feedback and exposure, has an undercurrent of suppressing certain videos that have nothing wrong with them. However, this does not greatly affect the true functionality of the app, and there is still a great amount of creative freedom that one can exercise for content. This app provides some truly enjoyable content, and is sure to endure for as long as the internet is entertained by it.