Recently, the Chinese social media app known as “Douyin” in mainland China, translated to Tik Tok in the other countries has taken the online world by storm. The app was launched in 2016 and hadn’t seen much attention in other countries outside of China, especially with similar apps like Musically already being popular. However, after Musically’s shut down this year, the creators of both Musically and Tik Tok creators closed a deal that is said to be worth one billion dollars. And with that, all Musically users accounts, information, followers and videos were transferred to Tik Tok.

At first, nothing much came from this change, and users simply used Tik Tok as they had Musically. However, this new app came with a feature that Musically hadn’t exploited to the extent Tik Tok had; the ability to duet with another user. At first, this was used for its intended purpose, with people having chances to duet with their favorite Tik Tok stars. This seemed like it was going to be all that came from this, until people started using the duet feature in a different way. Many people were going to videos of people either singing songs, lip syncing to movie scenes etc. Instead of this however, people were dueting in attempts to completely derail the original content. This was done in multiple ways, but the most popular form that caused other social media platforms to notice Tik Tok was people going to more serious tik toks and recording themselves doing dances from Fortnite. This trend sparked a massive following from a totally different group that either ignored or disliked Tik Tok in its original state. However, with the rise of this new internet meme, it encouraged those who saw past the facade of social media stars to present their opinions on those people in the most outlandish and goofy ways they could imagine.

As well as Fortnite dances, people would find certain videos that people were clearly making either for attention, ego boosting, or gloating, and do whatever they could to send a message to that user in the form of their duet, telling them how goofy their attempt seemed to them.

Although it all seems like some trolls making fun of people, it’s actually something more without anyone really realizing it. It puts those who take social media seriously, and those who don’t against each other.

This “war” of sorts raged on for a few months, and this new creation became one of the biggest buzz words among middle school and High School kids. Countless amounts of compilation videos were uploaded to Youtube, and many youtubers used it as an opportunity to either stay in relevancy, or rise to it. Youtubers like Pewdiepie and Slazo were some of the first bigger names to cover the topic, and many other followed in time.

The most popular videos the Youtubers promoted and viewed were under the category of “Cringe”. Theses videos most often featured kids or adults either using the app for its intended purpose but for whatever reason receiving a bad public response or just people doing strange outlandish or possibly overplayed things. This kinds of videos often had the uploader teased or even bullied by groups who were only on the app to make fun of others for a laugh. The people being “trolled” only kept giving them more ammunition however, and instead of ignoring, they gave them the attention they were looking for in the first place.

Although it’s relevance has been on a small decline in the Youtube area, its

relevance is still going strong on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Until the next big social media craze, Tik Tok will be on a steady climb to the top and the memes will keep coming along with it.