I grew up during the heyday of Friendster - you remember that?
It was a time when social media was still at its infancy, a period in time when bands would promote their music through Myspace and when people communicated with one another via mIRC.
I'm talking about the mid 2000s when Facebook wasn't even born and Tik Tok was a sound my alarm clock made, signifying the passing of time.
And time certainly has passed. Here I am, 33 years old and trying to comprehend the absurdity of the latest fad taking over the world.
TikTok.
My realization that the video-sharing social networking service was becoming a thing when I was in the car with my wife, laughing at a video on her phone.
"What is it?" I asked, my curiosity piqued.
"It's just this stupid video. It's so funny," she says, showing me a short clip of a plump man displaying weird dance moves.
I almost swerved my car and hit a divider.
Not making my day. At all.
The subsequent days I started observing my wife gradually spiralling uncontrollably into the abyss of insanity, cackling away like a maniac at almost every minute watching those god-forsaken videos.
From teens trying to rapture their skulls through the ‘skullbreaker challenge’ to people desperately trying to eat out cereal from a human bowl, watching all of these videos has made me realize that the word "entertainment" has taken on a different meaning altogether.
Don't get me wrong. I know that these are just fads and trends among teenagers. But the more I see these videos, the more it dawns upon me just how much times have changed.
Do you remember the good ol' days?
Good lord. I used to make fun of my father when he used to muse that 5 cents could get him an ice cream back in the '60s in Malaysia.
Here I am now, musing how people now consume content. The idea of watching videos on the go was such a novelty just 10 years ago. These days, I dread where we're heading.
Owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-based company founded in 2012 by Zhang Yiming, TikTok has over 41 million users outside of China as of January 2020. Its Chinese counterpart, Douyin, has over 400 million users.
Based on these estimates, you can already see that the popularity of TikTok has vastly overtaken Vine, its now long-forgotten rival. The question on everyone's minds is if the platform would surpass Facebook and even Instagram.
As folks wonder if TikTok would even manage this feat, I'm juggling another question: How would the future of advertising be?
Just a decade ago, advertisements focused on humour and emotions. With the advent of social media, specifically TikTok, I'm beginning to see a brand new trend emerge: The popularization of mindless entertainment.
These days, some of the ads catered towards the Gen Zs don't even make sense. Simply have a sneezing influencer in a zombie costume promoting a pharmaceutical product, add a catchy hashtag, and you have an outstanding social media campaign.
Okay, I confess. I watched the ad twice - which was the entire point of it, according to my wife.
Grow up, TikTok.
That said, I have to be fair in my assessment of TikTok. It's starting to have some valuable content as well of late.
For instance, the recent COVID-19 outbreak has seen how the platform has also been used to disseminate authentic information on the virus by the World Health Organization (WHO).
There has also been a slew of personalities that I've been following who've hopped on the TikTok bandwagon, utilizing the platform to reach out to more organizations.
Social media thought leader, Gary Vaynerchuk, sees immense potential in the platform especially for reaching out to the Gen Zs.
"TikTok's app is "training wheels" for future influencers and content creators," a blogpost from his official website reads.
The app in itself provides immense control and freedom to its users to allow them to produce content in whatever way they want. The fact that the content produced incorporates sound and visuals, make it even more appealing thus giving it a better potential to grow bigger.
Plus, I've also been using the app to view more of people expressing themselves creatively.
Maybe, just maybe, I need to be the one who needs to move with the times. But by god, I hate it.
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Cover image sourced from PR Newswire.
