As we all should know, Tik Tok was the most visited website in 2021, meaning that it has had and will continue to have a massive impact on music, fashion, trends, books, science and technology amongst many other aspects of culture. But, after all, how did it have such an impact, why do people like it, and how did it start?
The history
Tik Tok (former musical.ly) was founded in 2014 by Alex Zhug, and the app quickly became popular amongst tweens and teens since it allowed users to film short videos or skits and to easily watch other people’s videos.
In August 2018, the app was bought by Douyin, a Chinese app similar to Tik Tok, that was developed by ByteDance, a company that makes video sharing platforms, like Douyin and Tik Tok (that they bought and transformed). They changed the whole app and transformed “Musical.ly” into Tik Tok..
After the app was launched, trends came very quickly, obviously they had them in musical.ly, but Tik Tok made trends way more influential then musical.ly.
The app quickly became more popular, and, by the end of 2018, the app had over 1.5 billion users.
With the app quickly becoming more and more popular, several creators came and left, along with the trends themselves.
Trends
As long as history can remember, trends were always a thing, they come and go, and obviously, with Tik Tok being the one of the most successful apps in the world, it was expected for it to have its trends as well.
As we should know, trends are very influential on people, they can help someone realize a passion or something they hate. Trends can be harmful or inspiring .
Some past trends from the last year included songs from the Backyardigans, Chunky Rings, Olivia Rodrigo’s debut album (Sour), the girly aesthetic and picnics, which highly influenced our current sense of style, fashion, customs, and music taste. These were all influenced by Tik Tok.
One of the biggest Tik Tok trends was the VSCO girls of 2019, as most people wanted to be them, since the style was trending, and people enjoy following trends, a lot of times for validation of others and to seem cool, or because they like it. People follow different trends for different reasons.
Microtrends
What is a microtrend? A microtrend is a trend that is around for a short period of time, it will quickly become very popular, and then will disappear very quickly.
An example of a micro trend from last year were the chunky rings, which people loved, but quickly forgot as well.
A lot of fast fashion stores, like Shein, ASOS and H&M are very impactful with microtrends. As soon as they see a microtrend, it becomes the main product on their websites and, basically, most of what they produce.
However, microtrends are a problem. Firstly, it's a waste of money to keep buying new things over and over and over again, and a lot of times it can be harmful for the environment, to keep buying things repeatedly, and for brands to keep producing things repeatedly.
Fast Fashion and Capitalism, how do they relate?
A lot of times when buying from fast fashion companies we don’t think about the making of the products and the greed of the makers, and I don’t really hear this debate, which is quite interesting, due to the fact that capitalism really impacted fast fashion.
The reason that fast fashion is named fast fashion, is because of the amount of time it takes for the clothes to be brought from factories to store (which is extremely fast). The name was given in the 90s (end of cold war) by the New York times because of the quick amount of time it took for Zara's clothes to be produced and brought to store.
Most times, fast fashion brands have their clothes at cheap prices, and that is so it's more accessible for more people to buy, so then they can make way more profit.
A lot of times, fast fashion brands produce mainly ‘trendy’ clothing, which makes more people shop from there, which also helps the brand get their wanted money.
Fast fashion companies are greedy (like most companies), they want their money, and they will do ANYTHING to get it, which relates a lot to capitalism, since most companies (and people) want to be as rich as they can in the shortest amount of time.
Some fast fashion brands are: Zara, Uniqlo, Asos, Shein, Nike and H&M. But it's not only fast fashion that barely pays their workers. Brands like : Coca Cola, Nestle, B&M, Land Rover and Jaguar are other brands that use similar manufacturing processes as fast fashion brands.
Influencers
An influencer is someone who is popular on social media, a lot of times they influence trends/people, hence the name.
There are Influencers of every type, and usually what they do and help influence, is what type of influencer they are. For example, if I work with fashion and fashion brands, then I would be considered a fashion influencer.
Influencers make money by posting content and promotions by brands.
Cancel culture
Ah yes, cancel culture, we have all heard it, but maybe you don’t know what it is.
Cancel culture is a way of trying to get somebody and their career canceled,which in a simpler way is to get their career over or done.
A lot of people argue on cancel culture, some think it's necessary, others think it's not. I believe that depending on what the person did and how seriously they get canceled its okay, but instead of harassing them, leaking their address and more, we should educate the person on what they did, to make sure they don’t make the same mistake again, unless the person committed a crime, then I believe they should get arrested.
People debate cancel culture a lot. I genuinely do not blame them, cancel culture is something important and interesting to debate, due to the fact that there are so many different aspects to it.
There is so much unnecessary cancel culture, and sometimes people will take a small mistake someone made, and make it a huge deal. And the thing is, a lot of times people get canceled for stuff everyone does which is unbelievable.
Music
With Tik Tok being the biggest website, of course music will be somehow impacted. Like any other part of social media, different fandoms are on the app, and as Tik Tok is an app that uses audios, a lot of times people will listen to different audios by different singers, and might even start listening to them. Which can make an artist more popular, like Pinkpantress!
Social media has a big role and impact on music, I mean, most times you listen to music on online websites.
Tik Tok is one of the apps with the biggest impact on music, fashion and trends! And with the app just growing and growing, we will be able to see new music and music genres, new influencers and trends and more!