I remember the first time I used Vine.
I was sitting in the lobby of a credit union while I waited for my sister to do some…
credit unioning.
I needed to kill some time, and checking out a hot new app is severely on-brand for me.
Most of the stuff that I scrolled past was pretty boring, but every now and again, I’d
come across... a funny.
It’s easy to remember our favorite vines now, but people forget just how much crap
there was, especially in the early days.
Nobody had figured out how to make a good vine, and the recommendation algorithm had
yet to advance to the apparently clairvoyant levels of modern TikTok.
Still, I had it in my mind that the first people to use a social media app would have
an easier time building an audience.
Since there’s less competition, it’s easier to stand out, and as more people join, they’ll
snowball on to accounts that already have followers.
Vine was the next big thing, and I was right there at the beginning.
This was my chance!
I started to fantasize about what it would be like to have a thousand followers.
I would be famous, and I’d have bulging abs and be super cool.
It’s so funny to think that if things had gone slightly different, I could have been
a viner.
I have always wanted to go to Japan…
But I quickly gave up on my vine dreams when I got hired by Hank Green to go work at VidCon,
which I’ve talked about in a previous video.
Looking back at the start of vine, the thing that stands out to me the most is how some
people looked down on it.
Some didn’t take it seriously because: the videos were only 6 seconds long, and certain
creators gave the platform a bit of a douchey reputation.
Even as it continued to gain widespread popularity, the general sentiment was that Vine was “cringy.”
But years later, people are still quoting their favorite vines, so they must’ve been
doing something right.
Which brings me to TikTok, a relatively new, short form video app that’s launching the
careers of a ton of new creators, and despite becoming wildly popular, the general sentiment
is one of cringe.
TO BE FAIR, there is a bucket load of cringey stuff on TikTok, but that’s not a problem
for two! reasons!
Reason number 1: Hi, I’d like to introduce you to my friend the whole entire internet.
Literally every other website or app is the exact same way.
If you build it, they will post thirst traps.
That’s not TikTok’s fault.
It’s yours, you little weirdos.
Ok, the other reason it’s not a real problem is that there will always be people who call
out new stuff for being cringey or whatever.
Some people seem to think that being cynical and saying something is cringey or dumb makes
them look smart.
After all, they’ve taken the time to form an opinion, so they must know what they’re
talking about.
I’ve even fallen into that trap a few times myself, I was once an edgy teen.
But then I grew up, and I learned that being enthusiastic about stuff is way more fun.
All that cynicism really did was alienate the people who liked things that I didn’t,
for no reason!
Besides, secret reason number three: TikTok is surprisingly good at learning what you
like, so it doesn’t take long before anything that genuinely makes you cringe gets filtered
out, unless you’re into that sort of thing, you lil freak.
But the thing I like the most about TikTok is how easy it makes it for anyone to be creative.
Staring at a blank page and trying to come up with something funny is surprisingly hard!
Coming up with ideas is way easier when you have a starting point, or some constraints
to work with.
I remember one time in my english class we had to put together a book of poetry.
I couldn’t figure out what to write, until I tried writing a Haiku.
A poem with 3 lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables.
I noticed that having those constraints actually made it easier to write.
It gave me a starting point, and before long I was pumping out Haikus left and right.
TikTok lets you duet videos and reuse sounds, so right off the bat you have stuff to build
on top of.
It’s sort of an on-ramp to creativity, and my guess is that once someone is comfortable
remixing other people’s work, they’ll be more confident in making something from
scratch.
I’ve seen people say that it’s just kids lip syncing and doing trends, but I see a
generation of creatives getting their start.
And sure, most won’t people end up being full-time content creators, but most people
won’t be mathematicians either, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t teach kids math.
It’s good to make stuff, and I like that TikTok encourages people to try.
Of course YouTube does too, and I could go on for hours about how YouTube’s enabled
more people than ever to make a living being creative, but TikTok takes it up a notch.
Like, I think it’s huge that thumbnails aren’t really a thing on TikTok.
On YouTube, you could post a great video, but with a bad thumbnail, nobody’ll watch.
On TikTok you can just focus on making videos, you don’t also have to be a graphic designer.
It’s also really common for one of your first TikToks to get a ton of views, which
gives more people a chance at building an audience.
That might change, but for now it seems way easier to build an audience on TikTok than
anywhere else.
It’s also usually much harder than you’d think to get existing fans to make the jump
to a new platform, but established creators are also seeing success as TikTokers.
Take my old boss Hank for example, his TikTok is poppin off!
Mostly he answers important science questions like, “Is ice a rock?”
And it turns out that technically it is!
So, if lava is just melted rock, does that mean that melted ice, is also lava?
Hank says yes!
Which means, since people are made of water, that we’re all a bunch of lava monsters!
Isn’t science great?
The answer is yes, and also TikTok is great.
It took me a while to come around, but now I see that I was missing out.
Soo…
Follow me on TikTok, there’s a link in the description.
Ok bye!