TIKTOK
‘Give Black people credit’: Black TikTok stars strike, demand credit for their work
Whenever Megan Thee Stallion releases a new song, the floodgates of TikTok open. From “Cry Baby” to “Savage,” the social-media app runs rife with multistep dances, complex challenges and various remixes. That is, until Black creators decide to stop making them.
“Normally, once a Megan song comes out, there’s a dance that night, a dance within the hour,” TikToker Challan Trishann, who prefers to go by Challan T., 22, recently told The Times. “But I [was] noticing that there’s no dance [for Stallion’s latest song].
“I was scrolling and noticed that everyone was flailing their arms under the sound,” she added, referring to how TikTok users can find countless videos that feature and use the same audio or music by clicking the spinning record in the bottom-right corner of a video.
Be it Keara Wilson’s “Savage” challenge, Layla Muhammad’s “Twerkulator” dance or the “Renegade” by Jalaiah Harmon, Black creators have birthed some of the biggest phenomena on the internet.
However, as the moves become increasingly widespread — and usurped by white faces — their origins fade into oblivion. While white influencers such as Addison Rae make late-night television show appearances, break records and profit from reality series deals, Black creators are left behind to beg for credit.
Tired of constant cultural and intellectual theft, Black creators on TikTok have been on strike since Juneteenth, refraining from making a dance to Megan Thee Stallion’s latest single, “Thot S—.”
A recent Los Angeles transplant, living with other Black TikTokers in a house dubbed “The Crib Around the Corner,” Challan T. is a cosplayer and content creator on the app. Upon realizing the strike was in effect, the Barbados native tweeted June 20, “The way nobody knows what to do…. because we won’t make dances LMFOAJFKFOFKFJFOFK”
The way nobody knows what to do…. because we won’t make dances LMFOAJFKFOFKFJFOFK
— Challan (@challxn) June 20, 2021
Challan T. said in an interview, “I made my tweet laughing at it…but I thought about it more and I was like, no, this is a good thing that has happened. I’m actually really happy that this happened and I know it’s going to make a difference somewhere, whether minusculeor not.”
Cincinnati native Keon Martin, 17, stumbled upon a video of white creators waving their arms from side to side when Stallion’s lyrics clearly stated, “hands on my knees, shaking a—, on my thot s—.” He then made his own video poking fun of them, which racked up with more than 368,000 likes.
“I just think that this is very long overdue. When I first learned that there was a strike, I was in such amazement,” Martin told The Times. “Black creators are just really tired of our dances and our trends being stolen. We’re not given credit, but a white person can do our trend and walk out with 100,000 followers.”
The strike didn’t emerge from thin air. According to Erick Louis, a 21-year-old TikTok star, there has been ongoing discourse prompted by a lyric from “Black Barbies” by Nicki Minaj: “I’m a f— Black Barbie, pretty face, perfect body.”
“When you click on a sound, you can see all the videos under it, and it was literally a bunch of white women singing that specific part,” Louis said. “Throughout the week, a lot of people, specifically Black women, were just explaining their uncomfortability with the situation. It didn’t seem like white folk were willing to listen. It was a lot of gaslighting going on.”
Two hours before midnight on Juneteenth, Louis posted a video that arguably spurred the no-dance strike.
With “Thot S—” playing in the background and the words “MADE A DANCE TO THIS SONG” lingering above his head, Louis got ready — then waved both middle fingers in the air. The words above him changed to “SIKE. THIS APP WOULD BE NOTHING WITHOUT BLACK PEOPLE.”
“We make the trends … and when we remove ourselves from the equation … it’s nothing left but mediocrity,” Louis told The Times. “I can’t tell you how long it’s going to last, but I do want to say that I think this is an indicator of how frustrated the Black community is. I feel like this isn’t the last time something like this will happen.”
TikToker Herecia Grace recently created a video captioned “Stay strong ladies! They feel it!” in support of the strike, joking about how difficult it is for her and her sisters to refrain from dancing to Megan Thee Stallion’s new song. The Illinois native grew her following by posting videos with social commentary on Black animation representation.
“The understanding that we weren’t making a dance was just this well-known thing,” the 23-year-old said in an interview. “I feel like as Black women and Black people, we’re such rhythmically involved humans. There’s a motion that goes to everything. It was my personal struggle, haha.”
Last summer’s heightened activism led TikTok users to add “#blm” to their bios and change their profile pics to fists. However, Louis said that many of his videos surrounding Black issues have been taken down overnight, and Black creators who have millions of followers are still not verified on the app.
Louis said, “I know for me personally, this is a much wider issue outside of this digital colonizing. TikTok has a really big issue with just Black leaders and anti-Blackness. What’s kind of flown over people’s heads is this issue concerning the exploitation of labor on the app.”
“Without Black creators, things aren’t created on this app. Pop culture really moves behind us when we move it,” Grace said. “TikTok definitely gets to decide what goes viral, and I think they just don’t choose us. I think that the beauty standards have something to do with that.”
There have been complaints that TikTok suppressed Black Lives Matter content following George Floyd’s murder, which TikTok claimed in a statement was due to a glitch.
“We care deeply about the experience of Black creators on our platform and we continue to work every day to create a supportive environment for our community while also instilling a culture where honoring and crediting creators for their creative contributions is the norm,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement when reached by The Times this week.
On June 23, the company published a blog post about its commitment to diversity and inclusion and shared that people can follow the recently launched @BlackTikTok account. While Louis said that the company has yet to reach out to him personally regarding the strike, creators want words to turn into action.
Challan T., who has more than 4 million TikTok followers, said the platform needs to be more active in advancing and championing Black creators. In her experience, there have been multiple instances in which she hasn’t been credited for her work.
She said she often feels uncomfortable asking for credit from those who repost her content without attribution because someone will inevitably push back — and that aversion to crediting Black creators stems from one thing.
“Racism,” Challan T. said with a laugh. “People just don’t want to give Black people credit for the things that we make. Because there’s a lot of times where a white creator will make a dance, and I’ll see that credit in the caption every time. If it’s a Black person, it’s invalid automatically to some people, and they just don’t even want to attempt.”
This lack of credit breeds a familiar disappointment for Black creators, one that transcends the history of TikTok and is emblematic of American pop culture. In September 2019, Georgia native Harmon created the original “Renegade” dance, but a month later, the so-called queen of TikTok, Charli D’Amelio, went viral for the dance.
Only in February 2020 did Harmon finally receive credit after public outrage. On Tuesday, actor Leslie Jordan featured Harmon on his Instagram page, giving her credit for “Renegade.”
From AAVE (African American Vernacular English) being reduced to “Gen Z language” on “Saturday Night Live” to Fortnite being accused of stealing popular dances from Black TikTok creators, cultural appropriation is rampant and has tangible, financial ramifications.
“I was hoping that people would see from this that this app actually has no creativity without Black people. So, maybe we should actually credit them when they create these things, instead of making it difficult. Credit can take you very far, like crediting @yodelinghaley got her in Doja Cat’s music video [for ‘Say So’],” said Challan T.
Grace wants to believe that embedding attribution into these platforms shouldn’t be such a big ask, but evidently, that isn’t true. She would like to see TikTok promote Black creators’ content on the #ForYou page, which recommends videos curated to users’ interests, the same way it does for white creators.
While no one knows how long the strike will last — or if TikTok will placate concerns with an ephemeral #amplifyblackvoices hashtag and supplemental programs — Black content creators agree that it’s time for TikTok to prove it values Black creators’ input and content.
“I would honestly hope [a strike] happens every once in a while just to shake the table a little bit, because it seems like it actually made a difference this time,” said Challan T. “People were actually like, ‘Whoa, I didn’t realize how much you guys do on the app.’”
TIKTOK
TikTok Expands Creator Tipping and Video Gifts, Providing More Monetization and Marketing Options
TikTok continues to expand its creator monetization tools with the addition of video tipping and virtual gifts for regular uploads, in addition to live-streams in the app.
To be clear, live tipping and digital gifts have been available for selected live-stream creators via its Creator Next program since last year. This new expansion brings the same functionality to regular TikTok videos, which will add another way for users to generate direct income from their TikTok videos.
As you can see in these screenshots, shared by social media expert Matt Navarra (via Dan Schenker), to be eligible for the new Creator Next program, users will need to have at least 1,000 followers, and will need to have generated more than 1,000 video views in the previous 30 days.
Though TikTok does note that these requirements vary by region – TechCrunch has reported that creators need to have at least 100k followers to qualify in some cases.
As explained by TikTok:
“The new Tips feature allows people to directly show gratitude to creators for their content, much like recognizing exceptional service or giving a standing ovation. As is standard for tipping in person, with Tips creators will receive 100% of the tip value.”
Tip payments will be processed by Stripe, with creators required to sign up to manage their earnings in the app.
“With Video Gifts, also available today, creators can now collect Diamonds not only by going LIVE but also by posting videos. This also gives people an all-new way to interact and engage with content they love.”
That will provide expanded capacity to generate real money from posting, without having to go live, which will open new doors to many TikTok creators.
In addition to this, TikTok’s also lowering the threshold for those who can list their profiles in its Creator Marketplace brand collaboration platform, which enables businesses to find TikTok influencers to partner with on in-app campaigns.
Up till now, creators have required 100k followers to qualify for these listings, but now, TikTok is reducing that number to 10k, which will further expand available opportunities for both users and brands.
That could make it much easier to find relevant creators to partner with, in a lot more niches, which will add more considerations into your TikTok posting and engagement process.
As noted, these are the latest in TikTok’s broader efforts to provide comparable monetization opportunities, in order to keep its top stars posting to the platform, as opposed to drifting off to YouTube or Instagram instead, which have more established monetization systems.
The advantage that other apps have in this respect is that longer videos can include pre-roll and mid-roll ads, facilitating direct monetization, which TikTok can’t utilize given the shorter nature of its clips. As such, it needs to look to alternate funding methods, which will also include eCommerce listings, with direct product displays now the primary source of income for the Chinese version of the app.
The platform’s continued growth facilitates even more opportunities in this respect, with more brands looking to tap into the various opportunities of the platform, and partner with creators to maximize their presence.
How popular, and valuable, direct tipping and gifting can be is more variable, as some dedicated fan bases will pay, while others will see no reason to donate for what they can already access for free.
But even so, it adds more opportunity, and the lower thresholds for monetization will see many more opportunities across the board in the app.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
With TikTok and Instagram Reels slowly conquering social media marketing, there’s no mistake: Short videos are in demand.
The average length for most, if not all, business videos is only six minutes long. And that number is set to decrease as consumers look for shorter videos.
With that in mind, why are short videos in demand? What platforms are implementing short-form videos the best? And most importantly, how can they benefit your business?
TikTok – Changing consumerism, one video at a time
Where shorter videos are concerned, TikTok has always led the industry. What started as a merger with Musical.ly quickly became one of the world’s most powerful social media platforms. And what made it so famous? The same concept that made Vine viral short videos.
TikTok has over 1 billion active users, twice as many as Snapchat and Pinterest. For reference, Twitter only has 397 million users. With such a massive user-base, the only thing keeping the platform alive are the 15-second-long videos.
But why are short videos so popular? Simple – people don’t have time on their hands. When they open apps like TikTok and Instagram, they’re more likely to spend time watching shorter videos. And businesses are already catching up.
The impact of Instagram Reels
With the invention of Stories by Snapchat, other platforms like Instagram caught up on short videos. Instagram Reels presents adults and young users with a more straightforward way to tell others about their day. It employs quick photos and videos that are only available for 24 hours instead of being permanently posted. Now engagement is encouraged, especially after Instagram included the “Swipe” option. This has allowed e-commerce sites to both advertise their products and make instant messaging easier.
Youtube has joined the bandwagon
While YouTube is more or less a platform for long-form videos, its recent update offers shorter vertical videos. Known as YouTube Shorts, the feature allows creators to engage with their audience in under 60 seconds.
But YouTube has another trick up its sleeve, and this one is mainly towards advertisers. It is “YouTube TrueView” and is the primary advertising technology for YouTube. Through this, advertisers can promote long or short videos, with some being skippable after five seconds.
However, since most people are unlikely to click on longer ads, YouTube now offers 6-second non-skippable ads. The clickthrough rate for shorter 15 and 30-second ads is around 70%, a whopping number for any business.
It’s time to say goodbye to IGTV
With Instagram’s IGTV coming off as less captivating than its Reels and video posts, it has decided to remove IGTV. Instead, it has a separate section for videos. These videos will appear on a person’s profile and can be viewed from the Instagram app.
The change they made here is that videos posted to the Instagram feed can be up to 60 minutes long. The exact reason for doing this is not confirmed. But it seems like Instagram wants a seamless platform where short and long videos co-exist.
This makes long videos more accessible to users using the Instagram app. And it helps promote video tutorials that people typically do not consume on social media apps.
Another significant change is that Instagram videos that are longer can be monetized, a feature not available on Reels. This significantly shifts the focus towards creators who don’t sell a service and want to gain cash through Instagram.
Does this mean long-form videos are out of the picture?
With short-form videos becoming more popular among consumers, will long-form videos die out? While it’s highly recommended for any business to create videos as short as possible, the answer isn’t that black and white.
While short-form videos will drive traffic from new users, long-form videos are better for brand loyalty. Shorter videos will get more engagement and show up on new users’ feeds. But longer videos will be the backbone of your business.
Of course, that depends on what service you’re offering. Ecommerce companies will want to direct their attention towards short-form videos and ads. However, long-form videos are better suited for when you want to go in-depth about product details. That is, of course, only after you’ve grabbed the user’s attention with a short-form video.
Companies that offer webinars will benefit from longer videos. And so will companies that post interviews. However, promos and how-to videos should remain under a minute or two, depending on how long the tutorial needs to be.
Essentially, ask yourself two questions:
- First, can the video content be summarized in a short-form video?
- Do you want to merely catch the attention of the consumer or develop brand loyalty?
The correct formula is neither short nor long, but a mix of both.
What this all means for an entrepreneur
Short-form videos hold substantial market value, especially for new businesses. Take the example of the Dollar Shave Club. What started as a viral video on YouTube grew to become a behemoth of a brand.
And that’s not where the examples end. There are countless success stories like this one that prove the value of short videos.
Short videos have a higher clickthrough rate, and for entrepreneurs, that’s all you need. Short videos are of particular interest to people with ecommerce businesses. For example, 84% of people say they are more compelled to buy a product by watching a video. And the statistics keep on showing a friendlier short-video market.
There is no doubt that short-form videos are gradually creeping up the graph. And while long-form videos are great for information and brand loyalty, shorter videos are better for PR.
This begs one last question: Are videos beneficial for you? The answer is – yes!
And with 1 billion monthly active users, it’s time to join the action and get your brand out there to a wider audience!
Want to learn how to make a TikTok Video but don’t know where to start? Don’t sweat it! We broke down all the steps and tools you’ll need to make a viral-worthy first video and make sure your debut is anything but cringe.
Download the full Social Trends report to get an in-depth analysis of the data you need to prioritize and plan your social strategy in 2022.
How to create a TikTok account
First things first, you’ll need to create a TikTok account.
There are different ways to sign up for one: you can use your phone number, email address or social media account. Here’s how to do it using your phone number.
1. Download TikTok from Google Play or the App Store.
2. Open the TikTok App on your iPhone or Android.
3. Click the “Me” or “Profile” icon at the bottom-right of your screen.
4. Choose a method to sign up (we’re choosing “use phone or email”)
5. Enter your birth date and phone number (make sure this is accurate because it’s how you’ll retrieve passwords and confirm your account).
6. Enter the 6-digit code sent to that phone number (see, told ya!)
7. You did it! Celebrate by scrolling TikTok for too many hours.
How to make a TikTok video
Here’s how to get started on your very first TikTok video. Luckily for you, it’s way easier than learning this TikTok Shuffle dance.
1. Hit the + sign at the bottom of your screen.
2. You can upload photos and videos from your phone’s library or make a video directly using the TikTok camera.
3. If recording directly, hit the Record button at the bottom of the screen. Hit it again when you’re done recording. The default video mode is “Quick” which is for 15 second videos but you can switch it to “Camera” for more editing options and longer videos (15s, 60s and 3 mins), or “Templates” to create a specific style of video.
4. Tap the check mark when you’re done shooting all your footage.
5. Make any edits or changes on the post page. All your edits are on the right sidebar of the screen. Also, add music or sounds by hitting “Add sound” at the top of the screen.
6. Post that video and share it everywhere! Make sure to include a description with some hashtags so it finds its way to your audience.
How to make a TikTok with multiple videos
Instead of taking one long video, why not capture shorter videos and edit them together to make your TikTok video? Here’s how to do that (and you don’t need a film degree).
1. Hit that “+” sign to start your video
2. You can either shoot multiple videos directly by hitting that record button after each clip, building up your video with different shots. Or, you can hit the “Upload” button next to the record button and add multiple videos and photos you have stored on your phone.
3. Select all your media and tap Next.
4. You can now sync sound across your videos and make adjustments (or try “Auto sync” which will do the syncing up for you.)
5. Hit Next when done. You’ll be brought to a preview screen where you can further add sounds, more effects, text, and stickers.
6. Tap Next when you’re done editing your video and proceed to the Post screen.
7. Remember to throw in a description and some hashtags and bingo-bango-bongo you’re the Steven Spielberg of TikTok!
5 things to know before creating your first TikTok
TikTok style is less polished than other types of video
Don’t worry about being too precious with your videos. On TikTok, videos are meant to be candid, and natural—and they should show off your personality. Things like perfect edits, smooth transitions or flawless lighting shouldn’t get in the way of your idea and your own charisma.
Sure, there are lots of editing options, effects and filters to choose from (what the heck is the difference between B3 and G4 filters anyways?) but the real star is you —or, at least all 6 of these friends belting out Lady Gaga for the #caughtinabadromance challenge at this bachelorette. If that’s not candid, I don’t know what is.
@ariellehartford That finger stole the show! 😂😂😂 #bachelorettetrip #gatlinburg #caughtinabadromamce
You don’t have to dance
Good news! You don’t have to spend 2 hours trying to perfect the LaLisa dance tutorial to make sure your video stands out (unless you want to, then no judgment over here!).
There are so many different ways to engage your followers that don’t involve you popping and locking in your living room in front of a ring light (but again, no judgement if you do, except maybe from your pet and their adorable judging eyes).
You also don’t have to attempt whatever this is.
@sdavidrodriguez
Hashtags can help more people see your post
It’s no secret a good hashtag can go a long way on TikTok. Strategic use of hashtags will help people find your videos who don’t already follow you, and maybe even see it on their For You Page (FYP).
Find the best hashtags to grow your views and help get your content recognized by the algorithm. You worked so hard on it, might as well show it off to as many people as possible.
The right song can go a long way
Attaching a trending song to your video or audio from a popular TikTok video can help it get seen by more people. This app has a big music following (lots of new songs are intentionally promoted through the app to help them climb the music charts) so lassoing your video to one of these shooting stars is only going to help you get on more FYP and in front of new audiences.
@suzyjonesmusic
Your greatest asset is you
Don’t overthink it, just come up with a simple idea and let your personality shine through. The sense of intimacy and community that TikTok brings is why people love this app—it feels personal.
Even if you’re doing a TikTok challenge or trend that’s popular, the thing that will make you stand out is your unique take on it. It’s not about gimmicks but about putting your best self out there. Nothing should feel too staged or self-aware (that’s cringe territory). Pretend your audience are your good friends and approach it with that energy!
@janikon_No, I can’t re-record this, I’m laughing too hard #fyp♬ original sound – Stu (he/him)
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