Trapped In Disguises and Failures: Social Media! -Tanish
What image of tik-tok do the parents perceive that is yet invisible to the children?
One of the biggest hissy-fits that tik-tok users fell into, were with their own parents. The app mostly served a juvenile audience, but addressing a decade old catch-phrase, i.e. “Generation Gap” as the primary reason for most adults not falling for the app, is actually silly. {Not everything that widens the gap between adults and teenagers perception of things can owe “Generation Gap” as its cause.}
Tik-tok has been one of the most polarizable matter in India, accompanying a large group of young people standing in favor of it, alongside an equally large (or maybe even larger) group of people, especially allies of parents, adults and many You-tubers holding aversion for the app, calling it a virus.
WORD FACT: Let’s make it fancy. Let’s call it a “Digital Virus”, or a “Digirus”.
The major problem that Tik-tok disguised, wearing a mask of “Road-To-Fame” was the extreme reliance of its users upon the app, proposing their latent abilities to utilize their time into doing something productive, to generating more free time to invest in tik-tok. This means, that most of the users probably never used Tik-tok in their free time, indeed they made much of their time “FREE”, to make videos on Tik-tok. This applies mostly and mainly to people who spent hours making tik-tok videos, just for fun and without any serious intentions to work in the entertainment industry. Tik-tok would lose all its magic without its die-hard audience, who don’t make videos, but watch them, share them, and get influenced by them. But this is where it gets even worse.
Perhaps, the most striking concept that tik-tok is loaded with is double-meaning witticism, especially sexually-sarcastic but on a wide scale, ridiculous videos. There are tons of videos that are intended towards triggering one’s sixth sense to interpret things in an unusual way, mostly enacted by teenagers. Humor is something to be appreciated, but if it is obscene or promotes racial discrimination, then isn’t it something the creator should be ashamed aware of?
Weird Social Media Trends...
A trend that recently went viral on tik-tok revealed, that a person when black, feels sad and unsatisfied with a melanin rich skin color. But then a sudden transition into white skin color brings happiness. Unfortunately, people who jumped on the bandwagon called themselves (HOLD YOUR BREATHE!!!), “A Social Media Influencer”.
Now, where does that come from?
Have the schools failed in teaching students some powerful life lessons, about what constitutes happiness and what doesn’t?
Have the parents forgotten their responsibility to make their child a better human, in the race of making them better than others?
Have our society fallen short of people like Tomi Lahren, who just don’t see color?
People who think that this is a form of comedy and nothing to fuss about, should be warned of their sincere lack of inclination towards moral education.
A yet another concept that caught the attention of many tik-tok creators, defines how tik-tok promoted rape culture. Making a duet, with a girl on one side and a pair of boys on the other, the video begins with both sides arranging their apparel, showing that the girl is feeling remorseful and the boys are holding their pride, ultimately revealing that the girl has just been molested. What kind of message is being conveyed to the young boys and girls?
Even if the intention of the video was to spread awareness about “Molestation-A Social Evil”, it did the exact opposite.
A yet another horrible video showed an Indian tik-tok user with over 13 million followers, drinking water and splashing it onto a girl’s face, as a revenge of splitting with him for an another guy. It begins with the boy who is drinking water, and as soon as he throws the glass of water, the video nears the end with a girl wearing a colorful makeup on her face, receiving a hatred splash. The video went viral for promoting acid attack. The creator denied the accusations, saying that it was a glass of water and that the girl was a makeup artist. Now the makeup skills deserve appreciation, but it’s not hard to interpret that the video actually displays an acid attack.
What's The Problem?
The problem is that even if one’s intentions are clean and harmless, the videos never harmonize with the underlying message to be conveyed. No matter how good one is at acting, makeup or literally anything, but the whole aesthetics of a performance is based on the storyline and the message, which can and so far have gone unintentionally wrong, and very, very wrong.
Now Listen Kids (Of All Age)!
If anything is at odds with education and self-awareness, it’s not meant for you to indulge yourself into it. No ammunition powerful than education can transform our way of thinking and lifestyle. In fact, it’s the only ammunition which can save mankind. This advice is for everyone, emphatically young children for whom tik-tok or any other kind of social media would become an obsession. Regardless of the presence of community guidelines or NC Ratings, parents must take credibility for what their kids watch.
So, before tik-toking the next time, consider revisiting my article and your morals.
Until then, stay hydrated and you might want to think whether India deserves a replacement of tik-tok, I mean another Tik-tok?