There are copious amounts of popular culture that I consume on the daily. Examples being television and hours of social media including Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook etc. However, one type of popular culture consumes HOURS of my day, swiping on my phone mindlessly. This being TikTok, an application that has astronomically took over the world in a matter of month. In short, the app allows you to watch short videos on a loop through their “for you page” which is accustomed to the individual person, giving you hours upon hours of content to enjoy. It is extremely addictive due to how many people make videos/use the app, broadening what you watch.  As well as spending most of my time watching TikToks, I have also created content for my digital artefacts in BCM112, BCM114 and for BCM206 this semester. It’s so fun investing time in making TikToks, and it is almost as addictive as watching them.

TikTok originated in China when it was merged with a popular Asian app called ‘Musicaly’. The new formed app first became popular when a famous music artist made a video about his new song “old town road’ bringing the app into western culture. Many fans downloaded the app and used the song to make videos. From there the app continued to grow and from late 2018 to now, the app has gained over 2.3 billion downloads. It is the fastest growing form of social media in history. Now artists such as Doja cat have grown their platforms from TikTok, Doja cat’s music grew to popularity purely due to TikTok videos. TikTok has revolutionised this generation, trends, sounds and music are performed by millions of people daily. Business Insider stated that TikTok promotes equality and helps people find their voice, the culture on this app is described as positive and welcoming. It has for many, changed the way people think and allowed people to voice their opinion.

With that being said, this chosen popular culture correlates closely with a theory from this week, Cultural proximity. In the reading Cultural Proximity and Audience Behaviour: The Role of Language in Patterns of Polarization and Multicultural Fluency, Straubhaar explained cultural proximity as ‘‘the tendency to prefer media products from one’s own culture or the most similar possible culture’’.  TikTok became popular when countries such as England, Australia and America invested in the app.  When western creators started making content, more people globally began to download the application. The reason for this is due to when Asian countries solely dominated ‘musicaly’ the original app, many people from western countries were not interested in this content or couldn’t relate to it.

 People to tend to invest in media that relates to their own culture or is similar, it seems to be more comfortable and preferable. TikTok has become a part of everyday life, much like Facebook and Instagram, however the app is that popular, trends from the app have even been seen and used on mainstream television and it has had the ability to make normal people extremely famous.  

Leskin, P., 2020. Inside The Rise Of Tiktok, The Viral Video-Sharing App Wildly Popular With Teens And Loathed By The Trump Administration. [online] Business Insider Australia. Available at: <https://www.businessinsider.com.au/tiktok-app-online-website-video-sharing-2019-7?r=US&IR=T&gt; [Accessed 11 August 2020].

Ksiazek, T. and Webster, J., 2008. Cultural Proximity and Audience Behavior: The Role of Language in Patterns of Polarization and Multicultural Fluency. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 52(3), pp.485-503.