Mashable: How to create your own custom TikTok audio. “TikTok sounds can trend and go viral just like challenges, effects, and filters. Take Lil Nas X’s ‘Old Town Road,’ for example, or the dozens of viral sounds turned into memes circulating on the app right now. While there are plenty of sounds out there for you to choose from on TikTok, you can also make your own. Let’s check out how.”
Mashable: TikTok users parody East Asian fetishization with ‘Americacore’ videos. “Under the guise of celebrating ‘Americacore,’ TikTok users are recording their trips to Target and Walmart, eating snacks like Goldfish crackers and Funfetti cookies, and using paper plates. Paired with gentle music and soft filters, the video trend mimics the way many Americans fetishize East Asian culture, but misrepresent them in ‘aesthetic’ content.”
CNN: TikTok, Biden administration agree to drop litigation over Trump-era app store ban. “TikTok and the US government agreed on Wednesday to drop a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s attempt to ban the short-form video app from US app stores. In a filing in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, the two sides said they had mutually agreed the suit should be dismissed.”
BuzzFeed News: This Woman’s Viral TikToks Spooking Her Colleague Might Make You Miss Office Pranks. “The office prank — you know them. Tape under the mouse. Screenshotting the desktop and hiding the shortcuts. Sticky notes on everything. And the classic: scaring your co-worker so badly she jumps out of her seat and yells, ‘Goddammit!’ That’s what Jenelle Brennan and Julie English have been up to at their law office job at the Marino Law Group in Rochester, New York.” The lady who’s getting scared thinks it’s funny and doesn’t mind.
The Verge: How to use the Green Screen effect on TikTok. “The effect is a great way to spice up a video and provide an interesting visual. I use it regularly on The Verge’s TikTok so the audience can see whatever object or topic I’m discussing. Even though I usually rely on the basic green screen option, which adds a photo to the background, there are plenty of different effects to choose from. Here’s how you can do it in TikTok.”
Digiday: Recruitment tool TikTok Resumes risks magnifying unconscious biases, execs warn. “TikTok Resumes could become a recruitment tool that inadvertently encourages discrimination, especially in the wake of companies like Target and Chipotle signing on to the new initiative, senior executives in technology, HR and social responsibility roles told Digiday.”
Wall Street Journal: Investigation: How TikTok’s Algorithm Figures Out Your Deepest Desires. “A Wall Street Journal investigation found that TikTok only needs one important piece of information to figure out what you want: the amount of time you linger over a piece of content. Every second you hesitate or rewatch, the app is tracking you.” This is a video that lasts just over 13 minutes. It is fully-captioned as far as I can tell.
The Verge: How to find and create live videos on TikTok. “But before we go into making a live broadcast, here’s a quick tip on how to find one. Note that, at present, you can only see live feeds from people you are following, so if you are really into live broadcasts, the best thing to do is follow a bunch of people.”
Bon Appétit: On TikTok, the “CEO of Chai” Is Making Tea—and Spilling It Too. “Kevin Wilson says that if you are bored at home, ‘forget that chai tea latte from Starbucks.’ In a TikTok video from April 2020, he shows how to do the ‘real thing,’ crushing cardamom and nutmeg, boiling them in milk, adding tea leaves, and stirring until he sees the ‘color of a happy brown boy.’ The video went viral, garnering over 889,000 views. Two weeks later the 30-year-old Californian pastor-turned-TikTok star had over 20,000 followers on the platform. Just over a year after that, with more than 200,000 followers and 4 million likes, Wilson considers himself the ‘CEO of chai.’ “
The Sacramento Bee: How an octogenarian’s TikTok videos struck social media gold for Sacramento History Museum. “[Howard] Hatch is an octogenarian docent who has volunteered at the museum for 22 years. In a few short videos, he became a globally famous TikTok star, and the museum’s not-so-secret weapon. On camera, Hatch sports a denim apron adorned with a ‘CA Grown’ pin, thin wiry spectacles and a gentlemanly demeanor. He comes across as a clear outsider, and his own disbelief at the channel’s success just might be its biggest appeal.” You know what’s really funny? I first found this article via a newspaper in Malaysia!
Mashable: How to create a GIF from a TikTok video . “Gone are the days of screen recording a video on your phone and uploading it to a sketchy GIF-making website, choosing the start and end times, adjusting the frame rate, blah blah blah you know the struggle. Making GIFs can be a huge pain. GIFing on TikTok is refreshingly easy, and only takes a few taps. Here’s how to do it.”
CNET: TikTok hits 3 billion downloads. “TikTok has become the first non-Facebook mobile app to surpass 3 billion downloads globally, according to a Tuesday analysis from Sensor Tower. The milestone makes TikTok the fifth nongame app to cross the threshold, following WhatsApp, Messenger, Facebook and Instagram, which are all owned by Facebook.”
Tubefilter: TikTok Adds Fast-Forward, Rewind For Longer Videos. “TikTok appears to have quietly rolled out a seek bar that lets users fast-forward and rewind videos. Before now, the platform provided no way for folks to affect video playthrough. If they wanted to watch one specific part of a video again, they had to rewatch the entire clip.”
WSMV: ‘How to’ videos of false positive Covid tests removed from TikTok. “Faking a positive Covid test to get out of school is what some students in the United Kingdom are doing and they are putting their fake COVID tests on social media. TikTok blocked the hashtag ‘fake Covid tests’ because some TikTok users in the United Kingdom were posting videos of how to create a fake positive COVID test.”
Lifehacker: You Should Let the BookTok Teens Find Your Next Read. “If your reading habits have grown a little stale, but you don’t want to be sold to by a publishing newsletter and you don’t have the time for a book club, you should give BookTok a try—this burgeoning corner of the social media world is full of readers with opinions. Here’s a primer on how to make the most of ‘BookTok.’”
