Why is this interesting? - Tuesday, April 2

Colin here. I’ve been conducting an experiment of sorts for the last few weeks. Full on immersion into the social platform TikTok. And boy what a ride it has been. In addition to making me feel really old, it has been fun to see weirdness, unbridled creativity and the kind of secret code, self referencing, amorphous culture that I loved about the early days of the web.

Some obligatory background from Wikipedia:

“Owned by ByteDance, the media app was launched as Douyin in China in September 2016 and introduced to the overseas market as TikTok one year later. It is a leading short video platform in Asia, United States, and other parts of the world. In 2018, the application gained popularity and became the most downloaded app in the U.S. in October 2018.”

The app is very much Gen Z. It’s heavy on the middle school bedroom cameo and makes Instagram look like the most sincere (and stuck up) place on earth. The entire premise is a series of short vignettes and acted out scenarios set to uber-poppy earworm hooks. Of course there’s memes and influencers, but most of all there is vulnerability and creativity and people making fun of themselves. The platform only really existed as an abstraction for me (“isn’t that some teen thing?”), not unlike when I first heard about Fortnite. But when you see the scale and power of what is happening it is a bit insane. Every person over the age of thirty should download and try to wrap their head around. You’ll likely realize how boring scrolling through a Twitter feed of angry over caffeinated political pundits actually is.

Example 1: http://vm.tiktok.com/e7J5uj/

Example 2: http://vm.tiktok.com/e7NW2t/

Example 3: http://vm.tiktok.com/e7JRTe/

Why is this interesting?

Instead of reflecting culture, the platform is actually creating it like a little nebula.

One of the popular hooks is from a rapper Little Nas X: Old Town Road. The song jumped out of the platform and into the country charts until they decided it wasn’t sufficiently country. Also bonus points for the Red Dead Redemption unofficial music video clocking in at 19 million views.

But as our friend (and publishing executive) Justin points out, labels and publishers aren’t seeing a dime from the plays on this platform. So it will be interesting to see how this all plays out. But for now it is really a breath of fresh and and makes me like Gen Z a lot. (CJN)

Quick Links:

Today is the last day for Gmail’s Inbox service. Here’s a list of features that still haven’t made their way to Gmail. As a loyal Inbox user I’m sad to see it go. (NRB)
Burger King announced a meatless Whopper in partnership with Impossible foods. “Impossible’s biggest innovation has come from its use of heme, an iron-rich protein that the company believes is responsible for much of the distinctive taste of meat. Impossible found a way to cultivate heme from the roots of soybean plants and mass-produce it using yeast. The heme is blended with a combination of other vegetarian ingredients that are intended to have the slightly nutty texture of ground beef.” (NRB)
As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been trying to get into Formula 1. There are a bunch of car sponsors that aren’t familiar to us Americans (Petronas, Malaysia’s oil and gas company is the main sponsor of Mercedes, the sport’s most dominant team). One brand that caught my eye is Mission Winnow, who is the main sponsor of Ferrari, the other team at the top. Turns out it’s a way for Phillip Morris to continue sponsoring Ferrari despite the ban of cigarette advertising. Mission Winnow is some kind of weird front company that does … something? From their mission statement: “Mission Winnow has a simple goal: drive change by constantly searching for better ways of doing things. And by committing to learning and knowing more, it’s easier to make choices that improve the future for everyone. To make this happen, we’ll get inside the minds of outstanding innovators and change-makers, to see why and how they achieve excellence.” (NRB)
Bonus for Michael Brier: What an Everest Climb looks like in 2019 (CJN)

Thanks for reading,

Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN)