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The video essay boom

Hour-long YouTube videos are thriving in the TikTok era. Their popularity reflects our desire for more nuanced content online.

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The video essay’s reintroduction into my adult life was, like many things, a side effect of the pandemic. On days when I couldn’t bring myself to read recreationally, I tried to unwind after work by watching hours and hours of YouTube.

My pseudo-intellectual superego, however, soon became dissatisfied with the brain-numbing monotony of “day in the life” vlogs, old Bon Appétit test kitchen videos, and makeup tutorials. I wanted content that was entertaining, but simultaneously informational, thoughtful, and analytical. In short, I wanted something that gave the impression that I, the passive viewer, was smart. Enter: the video essay.

Video essays have been around for about a decade, if not more, on YouTube. There is some debate over how the form preceded the platform; some film scholars believe the video essay was born out of and remains heavily influenced by essay films , a type of nonfiction filmmaking. Regardless, YouTube has become the undisputed home of the contemporary video essay. Since 2012, when the platform began to prioritize watch-time over views , the genre flourished. These videos became a significant part of the 2010s YouTube landscape, and were popularized by creators across film, politics, and academic subcultures.

Today, there are video essays devoted to virtually any topic you can think of, ranging anywhere from about 10 minutes to upward of an hour. The video essay has been a means to entertain fan theories , explore the lore of a video game or a historical deep dive , explain or critique a social media trend , or like most written essays, expound upon an argument, hypothesis , or curiosity proposed by the creator.

Some of the best-known video essay creators — Lindsay Ellis, Natalie Wynn of ContraPoints, and Abigail Thorn of PhilosophyTube — are often associated with BreadTube , an umbrella term for a group of left-leaning, long-form YouTubers who provide intellectualized commentary on political and cultural topics.

It’s not an exaggeration to claim that I — and many of my fellow Gen Zers — were raised on video essays, academically and intellectually. They were helpful resources for late-night cramming sessions (thanks Crash Course), and responsible for introducing a generation to first-person commentary on all sorts of cultural and political phenomena. Now, the kids who grew up on this content are producing their own.

“Video essays are a form that has lent itself particularly well to pop culture because of its analytical nature,” Madeline Buxton, the culture and trends manager at YouTube, told me. “We are starting to see more creators using video essays to comment on growing trends across social media. They’re serving as sort of real-time internet historians by helping viewers understand not just what is a trend, but the larger cultural context of something.”

any video that starts with "the rise and fall of" I'm clicking on it no matter the topic — zae | industry plant (@ItsZaeOk) February 23, 2022

A lot has been said about the video essay and its ever-shifting parameters . What does seem newly relevant is how the video essay is becoming repackaged, as long-form video creators find a home on platforms besides YouTube. This has played out concurrently with the pandemic-era shift toward short-form video, with Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube respectively launching Reels, Spotlight, and Shorts to compete against TikTok.

TikTok’s sudden, unwavering rise has proven the viability of bite-size content, and the app’s addictive nature has spawned fears about young people’s dwindling attention spans. Yet, the prevailing popularity of video essays, from new and old creators alike, suggests otherwise. Audiences have not been deterred from watching lengthy videos, nor has the short-form pivot significantly affected creators and their output. Emerging video essayists aren’t shying away from length or nuance, even while using TikTok or Reels as a supplement to grow their online following.

One can even argue that we are witnessing the video essay’s golden era . Run times are longer than ever, while more and more creators are producing long-form videos. The growth of “creator economy” crowdfunding tools, especially during the pandemic, has allowed video essayists to take longer breaks between uploads while retaining their production quality.

“I do feel some pressure to make my videos longer because my audience continues to ask for it,” said Tiffany Ferguson, a YouTube creator specializing in media criticism and pop culture commentary. “I’ve seen comments, both on my own videos and those I watch, where fans are like, ‘Yes, you’re feeding us,’ when it comes to longer videos, especially the hour to two-hour ones. In a way, the mentality seems to be: The longer the better.”

In a Medium post last April, the blogger A. Khaled remarked that viewers were “willing to indulge user-generated content that is as long as a multi-million dollar cinematic production by a major Hollywood studio” — a notion that seemed improbable just a few years ago, even to the most popular video essayists. To creators, this hunger for well-edited, long-form video is unprecedented and uniquely suitable for pandemic times.

The internet might’ve changed what we pay attention to, but it hasn’t entirely shortened our attention span, argued Jessica Maddox, an assistant professor of digital media technology at the University of Alabama. “It has made us more selective about the things we want to devote our attention to,” she told me. “People are willing to devote time to content they find interesting.”

Every viewer is different, of course. I find that my attention starts to wane around the 20-minute mark if I’m actively watching and doing nothing else — although I will admit to once spending a non-consecutive four hours on an epic Twin Peaks explainer . Last month, the channel Folding Ideas published a two-hour video essay on “the problem with NFTs,” which has garnered more than 6 million views so far.

Hour-plus-long videos can be hits, depending on the creator, the subject matter, the production quality, and the audience base that the content attracts. There will always be an early drop-off point with some viewers, according to Ferguson, who make it about two to five minutes into a video essay. Those numbers don’t often concern her; she trusts that her devoted subscribers will be interested enough to stick around.

“About half of my viewers watch up to the halfway point, and a smaller group finishes the entire video,” Ferguson said. “It’s just how YouTube is. If your video is longer than two minutes, I think you’re going to see that drop-off regardless if it’s for a video that’s 15 or 60 minutes long.”

Some video essayists have experimented with shorter content as a topic testing ground for longer videos or as a discovery tool to reach new audiences, whether it be on the same platform (like Shorts) or an entirely different one (like TikTok).

“Short-form video can expose people to topics or types of content they’re not super familiar with yet,” Maddox said. “Shorts are almost like a sampling of what you can get with long-form content.” The growth of Shorts, according to Buxton of YouTube, has given rise to this class of “hybrid creators,” who alternate between short- and long-form content. They can also be a starting point for new creators, who are not yet comfortable with scripting a 30-minute video.

Queline Meadows, a student in Ithaca College’s screen cultures program, became interested in how young people were using TikTok to casually talk about film, using editing techniques that borrowed heavily from video essays. She created her own YouTube video essay titled “The Rise of Film TikTok” to analyze the phenomenon, and produces both TikTok micro-essays and lengthy videos.

“I think people have a desire to understand things more deeply,” Meadows told me. “Even with TikTok, I find it hard to unfold an argument or explore multiple angles of a subject. Once people get tired of the hot takes, they want to sit with something that’s more nuanced and in-depth.”

@que1ine link in bio #fyp #filmtok #filmtiktok #videoessay ♬ Swing Lynn - Harmless

It’s common for TikTokers to tease a multi-part video to gain followers. Many have attempted to direct viewers to their YouTube channel and other platforms for longer content. On the contrary, it’s in TikTok’s best interests to retain creators — and therefore viewers — on the app. In late February, TikTok announced plans to extend its maximum video length from three minutes to 10 minutes , more than tripling a video’s run-time possibility. This decision arrived months after TikTok’s move last July to start offering three-minute videos .

As TikTok inches into YouTube-length territory, Spotify, too, has introduced video on its platform, while YouTube has similarly signaled an interest in podcasting . In October, Spotify began introducing “video podcasts,” which allows listeners (or rather, viewers) to watch episodes. Users have the option to toggle between actively watching a podcast or traditionally listening to one.

What’s interesting about the video podcast is how Spotify is positioning it as an interchangeable, if not more intimate, alternative to a pure audio podcast. The video essay, then, appears to occupy a middle ground between podcast and traditional video by making use of these key elements. For creators, the boundaries are no longer so easy to define.

“Some video essay subcultures are more visual than others, while others are less so,” said Ferguson, who was approached by Spotify to upload her YouTube video essays onto the platform last year. “I was already in the process of trying to upload just the audio of my old videos since that’s more convenient for people to listen to and save on their podcast app. My reasoning has always been to make my content more accessible.”

To Ferguson, podcasts are a natural byproduct of the video essay. Many viewers are already consuming lengthy videos as ambient entertainment, as content to passively listen to while doing other tasks. The video essay is not a static format, and its development is heavily shaped by platforms, which play a crucial role in algorithmically determining how such content is received and promoted. Some of these changes are reflective of cultural shifts, too.

Maddox, who researches digital culture and media, has a theory that social media discourse is becoming less reactionary. She described it as a “simmering down” of the hot take, which is often associated with cancel culture . These days, more creators are approaching controversy from a removed, secondhand standpoint; they seem less interested in engendering drama for clicks. “People are still providing their opinions, but in conjunction with deep analysis,” Maddox said. “I think it says a lot about the state of the world and what holds people’s attention.”

no u know what i HATE video essay slander......... they r forever gonna be my fav background noise YES i enjoy the lofi nintendo music and YES i want a 3 hour video explaining the importance of the hair color of someone from a show i've never watched — ☻smiley☻ (@smiley_jpeg) January 19, 2022

That’s the power of the video essay. Its basic premise — whether the video is a mini-explainer or explores a 40-minute hypothesis — requires the creator to, at the very least, do their research. This often leads to personal disclaimers and summaries of alternative opinions or perspectives, which is very different from the more self-centered “reaction videos” and “story time” clickbait side of YouTube.

“The things I’m talking about are bigger than me. I recognize the limitations of my own experience,” Ferguson said. “Once I started talking about intersections of race, gender, sexuality — so many experiences that were different from my own — I couldn’t just share my own narrow, straight, white woman perspective. I have to provide context.”

This doesn’t change the solipsistic nature of the internet, but it is a positive gear shift, at least in the realm of social media discourse, that makes being chronically online a little less soul-crushing. The video essay, in a way, encourages us to engage in good faith with ideas that we might not typically entertain or think of ourselves. Video essays can’t solve the many problems of the internet (or the world, for that matter), but they can certainly make learning about them a little more bearable.

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Another Word

From the writing center at the university of wisconsin-madison.

#essayhack: What TikTok can Teach Writing Centers about Student Perceptions of College Writing

By Holly Berkowitz, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

There is a widespread perception that TikTok, the popular video-sharing social media platform, is primarily a tool of distraction where one mindlessly scrolls through bite-sized bits of content. However, due to the viewer’s ability to engage with short-form video content, it is undeniable that TikTok is also a platform from which users gain information; whether this means following a viral dance tutorial or learning how to fold a fitted sheet, TikTok houses millions of videos that serve as instructional tutorials that provides tips or how-tos for its over one billion active users. 

That TikTok might be considered a learning tool also has implications for educational contexts. Recent research has revealed that watching or even creating TikToks in classrooms can aid learning objectives, particularly relating to language acquisition or narrative writing skills. In this post, I discuss  the conventions of and consequences for TikToks that discuss college writing. Because of the popularity of videos that spotlight “how-tos” or “day in the life” style content, looking at essay or college writing TikTok can be a helpful tool for understanding some larger trends and student perceptions of writing. Due to the instructional nature of TikToks and the ways that students might be using the app for advice, these videos can be viewed as parallel or ancillary to the advice that a Writing Center tutor might provide.

A search for common hashtags including the words “essay,” “college writing,” or “essay writing hack” yields hundreds of videos that pertain to writing at the college level. Although there is a large variety in content due to the sheer amount of content, this post focuses on two genres of videos as they represent a large portion of what is shared: first, videos that provide tips or how-tos for certain AI tools or assignment genres and second, videos that invite the viewer to accompany the creator as they write a paper under a deadline. Shared themes include attempts to establish peer connections and comfort viewers who procrastinate while writing, a focus on writing speed and concrete deliverables (page count, word limit, or hours to write), and an emphasis on digital tools or AI software (especially that which is marked as “not cheating”). Not only does a closer examination into these videos help us meet writers where they are more precisely, but it also draws writing center workers’ attention to lesser known digital tools or “hacks” that students are using for their assignments.

“How to write” Videos

Videos in the “how to” style are instructional and advice-dispensing in tone. Often, the creator utilizes a digital writing aid or provides a set of writing tips or steps to follow. Whether these videos spotlight assistive technologies that use AI, helpful websites, or suggestions for specific forms of writing, they often position writing as a roadblock or adversary. Videos of this nature attempt to reach viewers by promising to make writing easier, more approachable, or just faster when working under a tight deadline; they almost always assume the writer in question has left their writing task to the last possible moment. It’s not surprising then that the most widely shared examples of this form of content are videos with titles like “How to speed-write long papers” or “How to make any essay longer” (this one has 32 million views). It is evident that this type of content attempts to target students who suffer from writing-related anxiety or who tend to procrastinate while writing.

Sharing “hacks” online is a common practice that manifests in many corners of TikTok where content creators demonstrate an easier or more efficient way of achieving a task (such as loading a dishwasher) or obtaining a result (such as finding affordable airline tickets). The same principle applies to #essay TikTok, where writing advice is often framed as a “hack” for writing faster papers, longer papers, or papers more likely to result in an A. This content uses a familiar titling convention: How to write X (where X might be a specific genre like a literature review, or just an amount of pages or words); How to write X in X amount of time; and How to write X using this software or AI program. The amount of time is always tantalizingly brief, as two examples—“How to write a 5 page essay in 2 mins” and “How to write an essay in five minutes!! NO PLAGIARISM!!”—attest to. While some of these are silly or no longer useful methods of getting around assignment parameters, they introduce viewers to helpful research and writing aids and sometimes even spotlight Writing Center best practices. For instance, a video by creator @kaylacp called “Research Paper Hack” shows viewers how to use a program called PowerNotes to organize and code sources; a video by @patches has almost seven million views and demonstrates using an AI bot to both grade her paper and provide substantive feedback. Taken as a whole, this subsect of TikTok underscores that there is a ready audience for content that purports to assist writers in meeting the deliverables of a writing assignment using a path of least resistance.

Similarly, TikTok contains myriad videos that position the creator as a sort of expert in college writing and dispense tips for improving academic writing and style. These videos are often created by upperclassmen who claim to frequently receive As on essays and tend to use persuasive language in the style of an infomercial, such as “How to write a college paper like a pro,” “How to write research papers more efficiently in 5 easy steps!” or “College students, if you’re not using this feature, you’re wasting your time.” The focus in these videos is even more explicit than those mentioned above, as college students are addressed in the titles and captions directly. This is significant  because it prompts users to engage with this content as they might with a Writing Center tutor or tutoring more generally. These videos are sites where students are learning how to write more efficiently but also learning how their college peers view and treat the writing process. 

The “how to write” videos share several common themes, most prevalent of which is an emphasis on concrete deliverables—you will be able to produce this many pages in this many minutes. They also share a tendency to introduce or spotlight different digital tools and assistive technologies that make writing more expedient; although several videos reference or demonstrate how to use ChatGPT or OpenAI, most creators attempt to show viewers less widely discussed platforms and programs. As parallel forms of writing instruction, these how-tos tend to focus on quantity over quality and writing-as-product. However, they also showcase ways that AI can be helpful and generative for writers at all stages. Most notably they direct our attention to the fact that student writers consistently encounter writing- and essay- related content while scrolling TikTok.

Write “with me” Videos

Just as the how-to style videos target writers who view writing negatively and may have a habit of procrastinating writing assignments, write “with me” videos invite the viewer to join the creator as they work. These videos almost always include a variation of the phrase— “Write a 5- page case analysis w/ me” or “pull an all nighter with me while I write a 10- page essay.” One of the functions of this convention is to establish a peer-to-peer connection with the viewer, as they are brought along while the creator writes, experiences writer’s block, takes breaks, but ultimately completes their assignment in time. Similarly to the videos discussed above, these “with me” videos also center on writing under a deadline and thus emphasize the more concrete deliverables of their assignments. As such, the writing process is often made less visible in favor of frequent cuts and timestamps that show the progression toward a page or word count goal.

One of the most common effects of “with me” videos is to assure the viewer that procrastinating writing is part and parcel of the college experience. As the content creators grapple with and accept their own writing anxieties or deferring habits, they demonstrate for the viewer that it is possible to be both someone who struggles with writing and someone who can make progress on their papers. In this way, these videos suggest to students that they are not alone in their experiences; not only do other college students feel overwhelmed with writing or leave their papers until the day before they are due, but you can join a fellow student as they tackle the essay writing process. One popular video by @mercuryskid with over 6 million views follows them working on a 6000 word essay for which they have received several extensions, and although they don’t finish by the end of the video, their openness about the struggles they experience while writing may explain its appeal. 

Indeed, in several videos of this kind the creator centers their procrastination as a means of inviting the viewer in; often the video will include the word in the title, such as “write 2 essays due at 11:59 tonight with me because I am a chronic procrastinator” or “write the literature essay i procrastinated with me.” Because of this, establishing a peer connection with the hypothetical viewer is paramount; @itskamazing’s video in which she writes a five page paper in three hours ends with her telling the viewer, “If you’re in college, you’re doing great. Let’s just knock this semester out.” One video titled “Writing essays doesn’t need to be stressful” shows a college-aged creator explaining what tactics she uses for outlining and annotating research to make sure she feels prepared when she begins to write in earnest. Throughout, she directly hails the viewer as “you” and attempts to cultivate a sense of familiarity with the person on the other side of the screen; in some moments her advice feels like listening in on a one-sided Writing Center session.

A second aspect of these “with me” videos is an intense focus on the specifics of a writing task. The titles of these videos usually follow a formula that invites the viewer with the writer as they write X amount in X time, paralleling the structure of how-to-write videos. The emphasis here, due to the last-minute nature of the writing contexts, is always on speed: “write a 2000- word essay with me in 4.5 hours” or “Join me as I write a 10- page essay that is due at 11:59pm.” Since these videos often need to cover large swaths of time during which the creator is working, there are several jumps forward in time, sped up footage, and text stamps or zoom-ins that update the viewer on how many pages or words the writer has completed since the last update. Overall, this brand of content demonstrates how product-focused writers become when large amounts of writing are completed in a single setting. However, it also makes this experience seem more manageable to viewers, as we frequently see writers in videos take naps and breaks during these high-stakes writing sessions. Furthermore, although the writers complain and appear stressed throughout, these videos tend to close with the writer submitting their papers and celebrating their achievement.

Although these videos may send mixed messages to college students using TikTok who experience struggles with writing productivity, they can be helpful for viewers as they demonstrate the shared nature of these struggles and concerns. Despite the overarching emphasis on the finished product, the documentary-style of this content shows how writing can be a fraught process. For tutors or those removed from the experience of being in college, these videos also illuminate some of the reasons students procrastinate writing; we see creators juggling part-time jobs, other due dates, and family obligations. This genre of TikToks shows the power that social media platforms have due to the way they can amplify the shared experience of students.

To conclude, I gesture toward a few of the takeaways that #essay and #collegewriting TikTok might provide for those who work in Writing Centers, especially those who frequently encounter students who struggle with procrastination. First, because TikTok is a video-sharing platform, the content often shows a mixture of writing process and product. Despite a heavy emphasis in these videos on the finished product that a writer turns in to be graded, several videos necessarily also reveal the steps that go into writing, even marathon sessions the night before a paper is due. We primarily see forward progress but we also see false starts and deletions; we mostly see the writer once they have completed pre-writing tasks but we also see analyzing a prompt, outlining, and brainstorming. Additionally, this genre of TikTok is instructive in that it shows how often students wait until before a paper is due to begin and just how many writers are working solely to meet a deadline or deliverable. While as Writing Center workers we cannot do much to shift this mindset, we can make a more considerable effort to focus on time management and executive functioning skills in our sessions. Separating the essay writing process into manageable chunks or steps appears to be a skill that college students are already seeking to develop independently when they engage on social media, and Writing Centers are equipped to help students refine these habits. Finally, it is worth considering the potential for university Writing Center TikTok accounts. A brief survey of videos created by Writing Center staff reveals that they draw on similar themes and tend to emphasize product and deliverables—for example, a video titled “a passing essay grade” that shows someone going into the center and receiving an A+ on a paper. Instead, these accounts could create a space for Writing Centers to actively contribute to the discourse on college writing that currently occupies the app and create content that parallels a specific Writing Center or campus’s values.

Holly Berkowitz is the Coordinator of the Writing and Communication Center at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She recently received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she also worked at the UW-Madison Writing Center. Although she does not post her own content, she is an avid consumer of TikTok videos.

We’re in a Golden Era of Video Essays and That Is Awesome

Exclusive content curated for Create: All things pre-production to post. See trends and topics like this and more come to life at NAB Show in Las Vegas. Explore the latest tools and advanced workflows elevating the art of storytelling.

READ MORE: The video essay boom (Vox)

Video essays are thriving in the TikTok era, even while platforms like YouTube are pivoting to promote short-form content. According to Vox , their popularity reflects our desire for more nuanced content online.

Video essays have been around for a decade or more on YouTube. Since 2012, when the platform began to prioritize watch-time over views , the genre has flourished.

READ MORE: YouTube search, now optimized for time watched (YouTube)

Today, there are video essays devoted to virtually any topic you can think of, ranging anywhere from about 10 minutes to upward of an hour.

“Video essays are a form that has lent itself particularly well to pop culture because of its analytical nature,” Madeline Buxton, the culture and trends manager at YouTube, tells Vox . “We’re starting to see more creators using video essays to comment on growing trends across social media. They’re serving as sort of real-time internet historians by helping viewers understand not just what is a trend, but the larger cultural context of something.”

To Vox writer Terry Nguyen , what seems especially relevant is how the video essay is becoming repackaged, as long-form video creators find a home on platforms besides YouTube. This has played out concurrently with the pandemic-era shift toward short-form video, with Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube respectively launching Reels, Spotlight, and Shorts to compete against TikTok.

Yet audiences have not been deterred from watching lengthy videos on TikTok either. Emerging video essayists aren’t shying away from length or nuance, even while using TikTok or Reels as a supplement to grow their online following, Nguyen finds.

She points to the growth of “creator economy” crowdfunding tools , especially during the pandemic, that have allowed video essayists to take longer breaks between uploads while retaining their production quality.

READ MORE: Virtual tips are helping content creators actually make money (Vox)

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YouTube creator Tiffany Ferguson admits to feeling some pressure from audiences to make her videos longer.

“I’ve seen comments, both on my own videos and those I watch, where fans are like, ‘Yes, you’re feeding us,’ when it comes to longer videos, especially the hour to two-hour ones. In a way, the mentality seems to be: The longer the better.”

In a Medium post, “ We Live in the Golden Age of Video Essays ,” blogger A. Khaled remarked that viewers were “willing to indulge user-generated content that is as long as a multi-million dollar cinematic production by a major Hollywood studio” — a notion that seemed improbable just a few years ago, even to the most popular video essayists. To creators, this hunger for well-edited, long-form video is unprecedented and uniquely suited to pandemic times.

READ MORE: We Live in the Golden Age of Video Essays (Medium)

Last month, the YouTube channel Folding Ideas published a two-hour video essay on “ the problem with NFTs ,” which has garnered more than 6.4 million views to date.

Hour-plus-long videos can be hits, depending on the creator, the subject matter, the production quality, and the audience base that the content attracts. There will always be an early drop-off point with some viewers, who make it roughly two to five minutes into a video essay.

“About half of my viewers watch up to the halfway point, and a smaller group finishes the entire video,” Ferguson said. “It’s just how YouTube is. If your video is longer than two minutes, I think you’re going to see that drop-off regardless if it’s for a video that’s 15 or 60 minutes long.”

Some video essayists have experimented with shorter content as a topic testing ground for longer videos or as a discovery tool to reach new audiences, whether it be on the same platform (like Shorts) or an entirely different one (like TikTok).

“The video essay is not a static format, and its development is heavily shaped by platforms, which play a crucial role in algorithmically determining how such content is received and promoted. Some of these changes are reflective of cultural shifts, too.”

The growth of shorts, according to Buxton, has given rise to this class of “hybrid creators,” who alternate between short- and long-form content. They can also be a starting point for new creators, who are not yet comfortable with scripting a 30-minute video.

“It’s common for TikTokers to tease a multi-part video to gain followers,” Nguyen reports. “Many have attempted to direct viewers to their YouTube channel and other platforms for longer content. On the contrary, it’s in TikTok’s best interests to retain creators — and therefore viewers — on the app.”

In late February, TikTok announced plans to extend its maximum video length from three minutes to 10 minutes, more than tripling a video’s run-time possibility.

READ MORE: TikTok expands maximum video length to 10 minutes (The Verge)

Last October, Spotify introduced “ video podcasts ,” which allows users the option of toggling between actively watching a podcast or traditionally listening to one.

READ MORE: Introducing Video Podcasts on Spotify (Spotify)

What’s interesting about the video podcast, Nguyen suggests, is how Spotify is positioning itself as an interchangeable, if not more intimate, alternative to a pure audio podcast: “The video essay, then, appears to occupy a middle ground between podcast and traditional video by making use of these key elements. For creators, the boundaries are no longer so easy to define,” she writes.

The video essay is not a static format, and its development is heavily shaped by platforms, which play a crucial role in algorithmically determining how such content is received and promoted. Some of these changes are reflective of cultural shifts, too.

That’s because the basic premise of the video essay — whether the video is a mini-explainer or explores a 40-minute hypothesis — requires the creator to, at the very least, do their research. This often leads to personal disclaimers and summaries of alternative opinions or perspectives, which is very different from the more self-centered “reaction videos” and “story time” clickbait side of YouTube.

“The things I’m talking about are bigger than me. I recognize the limitations of my own experience,” Ferguson reports. “Once I started talking about intersections of race, gender, sexuality — so many experiences that were different from my own — I couldn’t just share my own narrow, straight, white woman perspective. I have to provide context.”

This is a positive shift, Nguyen concludes. “A video essay, in a way, encourages us to engage in good faith with ideas that we might not typically entertain or think of ourselves.”

Are you interested in contributing ideas, suggestions or opinions? We’d love to hear from you. Email us here .

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On Your Screen: The Rise of Film TikTok

How do I cite material posted to a social media site like TikTok ?

Below are examples of how to cite a video and a profile from TikTok . For explanations, see our post on citing social media .

An example of the Dark Academic aesthetic can be found on  TikTok (Lilly). Work Cited Lilly [@uvisaa]. “[I]f u like dark academia there’s a good chance you’ve seen my tumblr #darkacademia.” TikTok , 2020, www.tiktok.com/@uvisaa/video/6815708894900391173.

Alicia Keys posts videos of herself singing on TikTok . Work Cited Keys, Alicia. “Videos.” TikTok , 2020, www.tiktok.com/@aliciakeys?lang=en.

Kyle Chayka Industries

Essay: How do you describe TikTok?

The automatic culture of the world's favorite new social network..

Hi! This is a 3,400-word essay about a technology that was totally new to me as of a few weeks ago. You can click the headline to read it in your browser. It’s a total experiment, so please let me know what you think.

This newsletter is a running series of essays on algorithmic culture and work updates from me, Kyle Chayka . Subscribe here .

For someone who writes about technology, I’m not really an early adopter. I don’t use virtual-reality goggles or participate in Twitch streams. Like everyone on the internet, I heard a lot about TikTok — teens! short videos! “ hype houses ”! — but for a long time I didn’t think I needed to try it out. How would another social network fit into my life? Don’t Twitter and Instagram cover my professional and personal needs at this point? (Snapchat I skipped over entirely.) What could TikTok, which serves an infinite stream of sub-60-second video clips, add, especially if I don’t care about meme-dances, which seemed to be its main purpose? 

Then, out of some combination of boredom and curiosity, like everything else these days, I downloaded the app. What I found is that you don’t just try TikTok; you immerse yourself in it. You sink into its depths like a 19th-century diver in a diving bell. More than any other social network since MySpace it feels like a new experience, the emergence of a different kind of technology and a different mode of consuming media. In this essay I want to try to describe that experience, without any news hooks, experts, theory, or data — just a personal encounter. 

The literary term “ ekphrasis ” usually refers to a detailed description of a piece of visual art in a text, translating it (in a sense) into words. Lately I’ve been thinking about ekphrasis of technology and media: How do you communicate what using or viewing something is like? Some of my favorite writing might fall into this vein. Junichiro Tanizaki’s 1933 essay “ In Praise of Shadows ” narrates the Japanese encounter with Western technology like electric lights and porcelain toilets. Walter Benjamin’s 1936 “ The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction ” shows how the rise of photography changed how people looked at visual art. By describing such experiences as exactly as possible, these essays become valuable artifacts in their own right, documenting historic shifts in human perception that happened as a result of tools we invented. 

We can’t return to the headspace of buildings without electric lights or a time when photography was scarce instead of omnipresent, but the texts allow us a glimpse. So this is my experiment: an ekphrasis of TikTok, while it’s still fresh.  

When you begin your TikTok journey, you are not faced with a choice of accounts to follow. Where Twitter and Instagram ask you to build your list yourself (the former more than the latter) TikTok simply launches you into the waterfall of content. You can check a few boxes as to which subjects you’re interested in — food, crafts, video games, travel — or not. Then there is the main feed, labeled “For You,” an evocation of customization and personal intimacy. Videos start playing, each clip looping until you make it stop. You might start seeing, as I did, minute-long clips of: 

— Gravestones being scraped down

— Wax being melted to seal letters

— An animated role-playing game

— Firefighters making shepherds pie 

— Tours of luxury apartments

— Students playing pranks on their teachers

— Dogs and cats doing funny things

The videos are flashes of narrative, many arduously constructed and edited, each self-contained but linked to the next by the shape of the container, the iPhone screen and the app feed. It’s like watching a montage of movie trailers, each crafted to addict your eye and ear, but with each new clip you have to begin constructing the story over again. Will the cat do something funny? Will the couple break up? Will this guy chug five beers? Or it’s like the flickering nonsense of images and text as a film spool runs out . 

The mechanism to navigate the TikTok feed is your thumb swiping, like a gondolier’s paddle, up to move forward to new content, down to go back to what you’ve already seen. This one interaction is enough to allow For You to get to know your content preferences. You either watch a video to completion and then maybe like or share it, or you skip it and move on to the next. 

The true pilot of the feed, however, is not the user but the recommendation algorithm, the equation that decides which video gets served to you next. More than any other social network, TikTok’s core product is its algorithm. We complain about being served bad Twitter ads or Instagram not showing us friends’ accounts, as if they’ve suddenly stopped existing, but it’s harder to fault the TikTok algorithm if only because it’s so much better at delivering a varied stream of content than its predecessors. 

A Spotify autoplay station, for example, most often follows the line of an artist or genre, serving relatively similar content over and over again. But TikTok recognizes that contrast is just as important as similarity to maintain our interest. It creates a shifting feed of topics and formats that actually feels personal, the way my Twitter feed, built up over more than a decade, feels like a reflection of my self. 

But I know who I follow on Twitter; they are voices I’ve chosen to incorporate into my feed. On TikTok, I never know where something’s coming from or why, only if I like it. There is no context. If Twitter is all about provenance — trusted people signing off on each other’s content, retweeting endorsements — TikTok is simply about the end result. Each video is evaluated on its own merits, one at a time. 

You can feel the For You feed trying subjects out on you. Dogs? Yes. Cats? Not so much. Rural Chinese fishing? Sure. Scooter tricks? No. Skateboarding? Yes. Fingerpicked guitar outside a cabin? Duh. And through the process of trial and error you get an assortment of videos that are on their own niche but put together resemble something like individual taste . It’s a mix as quirky as your own personal interests usually feel to you, though the fact that all of this content already exists on the platform gradually undercuts the sense of uniqueness: If many other people besides you didn’t also like it, it wouldn’t be there. 

A like count appears on the right side of each video, reassuring you that 6,000 other people have also enjoyed this clip enough to hit the button. Usually, the higher number does signify a better video, unlike tweets, for which the opposite is usually true. You can click into a comment section on each TikTok, too, which feel like YouTube comment sections: people jockeying to write the best riff or joke, bonus content after you watch the clip. There are no time stamps on the main feed. Unlike other social networks, it’s intentionally difficult to figure out when a TikTok video was originally posted, and many accounts repost popular videos anyway. This lends the feed an atmosphere of eternal present: It’s easy to imagine that everything you’re watching is happening right now , a gripping quality that makes it even harder to stop watching. 

Over the time I’ve been on TikTok the content of my feed has moved through phases. I can’t be sure how much the shifts are baked in to the system and how much they are a result of me engaging with different content (I’m not reporting on the structure of the algorithm here, just spelunking). There was a heavy skateboarding phase at first, but the mix has evolved into cooking lessons, clips of learning Chinese, home construction tips from This Old House, art-making close-ups, and early 2000s video games. If you search for a particular hashtag, hit like on a few videos, or follow an account, the For You algorithm tweaks your feed, adding in a bit more of that type of content. 

(A note on content mixture: “The mix” is famously how Tina Brown described the combination of different kinds of stories in Vanity Fair when she was the magazine’s very successful editor-in-chief in the ‘80s. Brown’s mix was hard-hitting news, fluffy celebrity profiles, glamorous fashion shoots, and smart critical commentary, all combined into one magazine. TikTok automates the mix of all these topics, going farther than any other platform to mimic the human editor.)

A sense emerges of teaching the algorithm what you like, bearing with it through periods of irrelevance and engaging in a way that shapes your feed. I barely look at the tab that shows me videos from people I actually follow, but I still follow them to make them show up more often in my For You feed. The process inspires patience and empathy, the way building a piece of IKEA furniture makes you like it more . It’s easy to get mad at Twitter because its algorithmic intrusions are so obvious; it’s harder with TikTok when the algorithm is all there is. The feed is a seamless environment that the user is meant to stay within. 

I didn’t tell TikTok I was interested in sensory deprivation tanks, but through some combination of randomness, metrics, and triangulation of my interests based on what else I engaged with, the app delivered a single video from a float spa and I immediately followed the account. Such specific genres of content are available elsewhere on the internet — I could follow a sensory deprivation YouTube channel or Instagram account — but the TikTok feed centralizes them and titrates the niche topic into my feed as often as I might want to see it, maybe one out of a hundred videos. After all, one video doesn’t mean I want dozens more of the same kind, as the YouTube algorithm seems to think. 

Before the 2010s we used to watch cable television, sitting on the couch with the remote pointed actively at the screen. If the show on one channel was boring, we changed it. If everything was boring, we engaged in an activity called channel flipping, switching continuously one to the next until something caught our eye. (On-demand streaming means we now flip through thumbnails more than channels; platform-flipping is the new channel-flipping.) TikTok is an eternal channel flip, and the flip is the point: there is no settled point of interest to land on. Nothing is meant to sustain your attention, even for cable TV’s traditional 10 minutes between commercial breaks. 

Like cable television, the viewer does not select the content on TikTok, only whether they want to watch it at that moment or not. It’s a marked contrast to how, in the past decade, social media platforms marketed themselves as offering user agency: you could follow anything or anyone you want, breaking traditional media’s hold on audiences. Instead, TikTok’s For You offers the passivity of linear cable TV with the addition of automated, customized variety and without the need for human editors to curate content or much action from the user to choose it. (Passivity is a feature; Netflix just announced that it’s exploring a version of linear TV .) Like Facebook , and unlike streaming, TikTok also claims to offload the risk of being an actual publisher: the content is all user-generated. Thus it’s both cheap and infinite.

The passivity induces a hypnotized flow state in the user. You don’t have to think, only react. The content often reinforces this thoughtlessness. It’s ephemera, fragments of the human mundane; Rube Goldberg machines are very popular. Sure, you can learn about food or news, but the most essentially TikTok thing I’ve seen in the past few days is a video of a young man who took a giant ball he made of beige rubber bands to an abandoned industrial site and bounced it around, off ledges and down cement steps, in the violet haze of early dusk. The clip is calm and quiet but also surreal, like a piece of video art you might watch for 15 minutes in a gallery. It has no symbolism, no story arc, only a pleasant absence of meaning and the brain-tickling pleasure of the ball gently squishing when it hits a surface, like an alien exploring the earth, unaccustomed to gravity. 

I’m biased in favor of such ambient content, which is probably why I get so much of it. But numb immersion — like a sensory deprivation tank — seems to be the point of the platform. On Twitter we get breaking news; on Instagram we see our friends and go shopping; on Facebook we (not me personally) join groups and share memes. On TikTok we are simply entertained. This is not to discount it as a very real force for politics, activism, and the business of culture, or a vehicle to create content and join in conversations. But for users, pure consumption is encouraged. The best bodily position in which to watch TikTok is supine, muscles slack, phone above your face like it’s an endless tunnel into the air. 

Sometimes a TikTok binge — short and intense until you get sick of it, like a salvia trip — has the feeling of a game. You keep flipping to the next video as if in search of some goal, though there are only ever more videos. You want to come to an end, though there is no such thing. This stumbling process is why users describe encountering a new subject matter as “finding [topic] TikTok,” like Cooking TikTok or Tiny House TikTok or Carpentry TikTok. There’s a sense of discovery because you wouldn’t necessarily know how to get there otherwise, only through the munificence of the algorithm. A limiting of possibilities is recast as a kind of magic. 

What is the theory of media that TikTok injects into the world? What are the new aesthetic standards that it will set as it becomes even more popular, beyond its current 850 million active users? It seems to combine Tumblr-style tribal niches with the brevity and intimacy of Instagram stories and the scalability of YouTube, where mainstream fame is most possible. The startup Quibi received billions of dollars of investment to bet on short-form video watched on phones. The company shut down within eight months of launch, but it wasn’t wrong about the format; it just produced terrible content (see my review of the service for Frieze ). TikTok is compelling because it’s so wide, a social network with the userbase of Facebook but fully multimedia, with the kinds of expensive-looking video editing and effects we’re used to on television. The platform presents media (or life itself?) as a permanent reality TV show, and you can tune in to any corner of it at any time.

TikTok isn’t limited to power users or a particular demographic (as in the case of the mutual addiction of Twitter and journalists), and that’s largely because of the adeptness of its algorithmic feed. There is no effort required to fine tune it, only time and swiping. Though the interface looks a little messy, it’s actually relatively simple, a quality that Instagram has abandoned under Facebook’s ownership in favor of cramming in every feature and format possible. (Where do we post what on there now — what’s a grid post, a story, or a reel, which are just Instagram’s shitty TikTok clone?) In fact, just surfing TikTok feels vaguely creative, as if you move through the field of content with your mind alone. 

Even if you are only watching, you are a part of TikTok. Internet culture has always been interactive; part of the joy of Lolcats was that you could make your own, using the template as a tool for self-expression and inside jokes. In recent years that kind of creative self-expression via social media has fallen by the wayside in favor of retweets, shares, and likes, centralizing authority around a few influential accounts and pushing the emphasis toward brands (which buy ads and drive revenue) and consumerism. TikTok returns triumphantly to the lowbrow, the absurd, the unimportant. 

The culture that it perpetuates are memes and patterns, like the dance moves that users assign to specific clips of songs. Audio is a way to navigate the platform: You can browse all the videos made to a particular soundtrack, making it very potent for spreading music. Users also create reaction videos to other videos, showing a selfie shot next to the original clip. Everything is participatory, and the nature of the algorithm makes it so that a video from an unknown account can go as viral as easily as one from a famous account. (This is true of all social networks but particularly extreme on TikTok.) The singular TikTok is less important than the continued flow of the feed and the emergence of recognizable tropes of TikTok culture that get traded back and forth, like the “ I Ain’t Seen Two Pretty Best Friends ” meme. The game is to interpolate that phrase into a video, sometimes into an otherwise straight-faced script: the surprise of the meme line, which is more absurdist symbol than meaningful language, tips you to the fact that it’s a joke. 

In his aforementioned essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” Walter Benjamin wrote that “aura” was contained in the physical presence of a unique work of art; it induced a special feeling that wasn’t captured by the reproducible photograph. By now we’ve long accepted that photographs can be art, too; even if they’re reproductions, they still maintain an aura. The evolution that I’m grasping for here — having started this paragraph over many times — is that now, in our age of the reproducibility of anything, the meaning of the discrete work of art itself has weakened. The aura is not contained within a single specific image, video, or physical object but a pattern that can be repeated by anyone without cheapening its power — in fact, the more it’s repeated, the more its impact increases. The unit of culture is the meme, its original author or artist less important than its primary specimens, which circulate endlessly, inspiring new riffs and offshoots. TikTok operates on and embraces this principle. 

Could it be that we’re encouraged to assign some authorship to the algorithm itself, as the prime actor of the platform? After all it’s the equation that’s bringing us this smooth, entrancing feed, that’s encouraging creators to create and consumers to consume. I don’t think that’s true, though, or at least not yet. We have to remember that the algorithm is also the work of its human creators at Bytedance in China, who have in the past been directed to “suppress posts created by users deemed too ugly, poor, or disabled for the platform” as well as censor political speech, according to The Intercept . Recommendation algorithms can be tools of soft censorship, subtly shaping a feed to be as glossy, appealing, and homogenous as possible rather than the truest reflection of either reality or a user’s desires. In Hollywood, a producer tells you if you’re not hot enough to be an actor; on TikTok, the algorithm lets you know if you don’t fit the mold. 

As it is, TikTok molds what and how I consume more than what I want to create. I feel no drive to make a TikTok video, maybe because the platform’s demographic is younger than I am and it still requires more video editing than I can handle, though it can also algorithmically crop video clips to moments of action. But when I switch over to Instagram and watch the automatic flip of stories from my friends and various brands, it suddenly feels boring and dead, like going from color TV back to black and white. I don’t want to only get content from people I follow; I want the full breadth of the platform, perfectly filtered. The grid of miscellany of Instagram’s discover tab doesn’t stand up to TikTok’s total immersion. 

TikTok’s feed is finely tuned and personalized, but I think what’s more important is how it automates the entire experience of online consumption. You don’t have to decide what you’re interested in; you just surrender to the platform. Automation gets disguised as customization. That makes the structure and priorities of the algorithm even more important as it increasingly determines what we watch, read, and hear, and what people are incentivized to create in digital spaces to get attention. And TikTok absolutely wants all of your attention. It’s not about casual browsing, not glancing at Twitter to see the latest news or checking your friend’s Instagram profile for updates. It’s a move directly toward an addiction that will be incredibly profitable for the company. And the more we trust that algorithmic feed, the easier it will be for the app to exploit its audiences.

This was an interesting experiment to write because I had no formal constraints from an external publication and of course no editing or feedback before publishing it. I wrote it just to document an obsession, and as with many obsessions, it’s fading a bit as I write it all out. At this point I’ve documented all the thoughts I have currently, in a fairly loose way. 

I would really like messages about this piece! Did it work, did it not work? Is this productive or not? There are more essays I’d like to write like this, without the pressure to fully compel public readers. But its main utility is to share ideas and start conversations, so it needs to accomplish at least that. 

Please comment, email me by replying, tweet about this, post it on your LinkedIn, or whatever platform you choose. Make a TikTok reaction video.

If you like this piece, please hit the heart button below! It helps me reach more readers on Substack. Email me at [email protected] or reply. Also:

— Follow me on  Twitter

— Buy my book on minimalism,  The Longing for Less

— Read more of my writing:  kylechayka.com

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The best video essays of 2023

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Looking at the year’s notable video essays, many grapple with issues at the heart of contemporary media itself. There are dissections of video-playing tools, exposés of how corporations restrict access, contrasts between tropes and reality, and thorough investigations of trends in plagiarism and/or fabrication. As the essay landscape refines, it seems to peer inward as much as out.

On the making of this list: I’ve been trying to stay up to date on video essays for a while, and have been contributing to lists and/or voting in polls about the best videos made each year since 2018. Over this time, doing these kinds of roundups has gotten exponentially more difficult. As YouTube has grown to become a mega-business hosting powerful creators (part of the general trend of social media video sites becoming the new primary forum for cultural influence), I’ve seen essayists I once thought of as niche accrue follower counts in the millions. It’s been surreal. For this year’s list, I tried to shake things up by keeping the essayists who have appeared in previous editions to a minimum, along with the usual considerations about incorporating a diversity of creator backgrounds and video style. Once again, the videos are presented simply in order of publishing date.

[Also, I’m going to preface this with a mega mea culpa: It was absolute malpractice of me to not include Platformer Toolkit by Game Maker’s Toolkit in the best video essays of 2022 list . I don’t have a good excuse, either; I just straight up missed the essay at the time it came out, and then overlooked it during my catch-up phase at the end of the year. But an essay about game design that instructs you on its ideas by letting you actively engage with them through interactivity feels like a breakthrough in the form.]

Practices of Viewing by Johannes Binotto

Johannes Binotto is a Swiss researcher and lecturer who has been adding to his “Practices of Viewing” series for several years now, and every installment preceding 2023’s videos, “Ending” and “Description,” is well worth checking out. With each essay, Binotto examines a specific element of the media viewing interface, and how they affect an audience’s engagement with it. Some subjects, like fast-forwarding, pausing, or muting, may seem like obvious touchstones, while others, like sleep, are more out-there approaches to the conversation.

A History of the World According to Getty Images by Richard Misek

This technically debuted last year, making the rounds at film festivals, but it was made available online this past spring, so I’m including it here. A History of the World According to Getty Images is a great example of a work embedding its own ethos into its construction. Misek, another academic, is scrutinizing how for-profit companies (specifically Getty Images) mediate information that’s supposed to be available for all. In practice, a great deal of visual material that’s technically in the public domain can only be accessed in decent quality by paying an archive like Getty. Misek circumvents this by paying the fee to use select footage in this essay and then making this essay itself available for anyone to cite and clip from, putting that footage out into the world for real.

The Faces of Black Conservatism by F.D Signifier

I feel that video essays that consist mainly of the creator talking directly into a camera stretch the definition of the term – to me, the best cinematic and argumentative potential of the form lies in the power of editing. F.D Signifier’s contrast between fictional depictions of Black conservatives and the reality of how they appear across media exemplifies is what sets him apart in this genre: not just the depth of his thought (though it is considerable), but also the playful ways in which he presents the objects of his discussion. The running gag here in which he films himself holding hairstyling tools over the heads of various people on his screen had me laughing harder with each appearance.

Games That Don’t Fake the Space by Jacob Geller/Why We Can’t Stop Mapping Elden Ring by Ren or Raven

I don’t actually think this is the best essay Jacob Geller released this year (that would be either “Games that Aren’t Games” or “How Can We Bear to Throw Anything Away?” ), but it pairs so incredibly well with Renata Price’s essay (an impressive video debut building on her experience as a games critic) that it felt more appropriate to present them as a double feature. Both videos are sharp examinations of the ways that video games conjure physical space. Geller illuminates the shortcuts and tricks games often employ through examples of ones that, as the title suggests, don’t use such devices, while Price analyzes the impulses beneath what one could call the “cartographic instinct” in open-world games.

Why Do Brands Keep Doing These Crazy Influencer Trips?? by Mina Le

It’s been encouraging in recent years to see Le grow more confident in her mixing of media in her videos on fashion and film/television. You might remember the controversy around Shein granting influencers a limited hangout in a clothing factory this past summer. Le contextualizes this story by delving into the wider, supremely odd world of sponsored tours. If you watch this on your phone, the transitions between Le speaking to the camera and the clips of TikToks and other videos and photos flow together in a manner not unlike how one would scroll a social media feed, creating queasy resonance between message and medium.

Feeling Cynical About Barbie by Broey Deschanel / The Plastic Feminism of Barbie by Verilybitchie

I present these two videos not as a contrarian attack on Barbie (a film I enjoyed), but to highlight the important role of considered critical voices that dissent against prevailing opinions. Both Maia Wyman and Verity Ritchie unpack the issues with a heavily corporate product attempting to capitalize on feminist sentiment. Ritchie emphasizes the history of Barbie the brand and how the movie fits into it, while Wyman reads more into the specifics of the film’s plot. Together these videos do a good job of elaborating on legendary critic Amy Taubin’s Barbie reaction : “It’s about a fucking doll !’”

TikTok Gave Me Autism: The Politics of Self Diagnosis by Alexander Avila

There’s a lot of social media discourse over who can and can’t — and should or shouldn’t — claim the label of “autistic.” As someone who’s struggled with both the logistics and appropriateness of sussing out whether I’m on the spectrum, this video hit me hard. There are parts that feel like they veer so far into philosophical query that they threaten to obfuscate rather than elucidate the subject, but the essay as a whole is undeniably compelling. Avila’s own confessed stake in the question of self-diagnosis is itself affecting. This is the most searingly personal video on this list, uniting self-inquiry with rigorous research.

Chaste/Unchaste by Maryam Tafakory

This years shortest entry is a deceptively simple interrogation of the concept of “chastity” as defined by Iranian censorship standards. Takafory is a veteran of the academic essay scene, and I’m delighted by the opportunity to present her work to a wider audience. The video’s text is minimal, and its visuals are simply a montage of clips from Iranian films, but the implicit question of propriety grips the viewer with each cut.

Journey to Epcot Center: A Symphonic History by Defunctland

This is the most boundary-pushing essay on this year’s list. Completely lacking commentary, it instead emphasizes visuals and reenactment in telling the story of how Disney’s Epcot park went from concept to realization over the decades. Kevin Perjurer also provides a detailed set of notes that are meant to be read along with watching the video, further demanding one’s full attention. This is a direct acknowledgement of how we use the internet, the windowed experience of browsing and watching videos. I don’t think everything works; many of the reenactments, while impressively professional, feel somewhat redundant. But I’d prefer a creator take big swings that result in a few flaws rather than play it safe, and I hope both Perjurer and others continue in such an experimental vein.

Plagiarism and You(Tube) by Hbomberguy

Harry Brewis is popular enough that he doesn’t need any boost, but even in the very brief period since this video’s release as of the time of writing, Plagiarism and You(Tube) has made seismic impact on the YouTuber scene . Does it need to be almost four hours long? Maybe not. Yet the sheer volume of evidence it pulls together to support various accusations of plagiarism does seem vital. The main focus of the piece, James Somerton, went into lockdown over the fairly comprehensive evidence presented against him (and has since attempted to apologize ). I’m seeing conversations flourish around the endemic problem of plagiarism on the internet and what is to be done about it, and a surge of creators recognizing and calling out others who have taken their work without credit. There’s a deeper issue at play here, which is that the growth of YouTube entertainment has come with a truly daunting mountain of crap content that nonetheless attracts views (and thus dollars).

On the subject of low quality standards on YouTube, beyond plagiarism, Todd in the Shadows’ recent exhaustive effort to fact-check various false claims Somerton has made in his work is a useful supplement to this video.

Polygon’s Best of the Year 2023

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• The best tabletop RPGs we played in 2023
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• The best Blu-rays and 4K UHD releases of 2023
• The best new tabletop RPG books of 2023
• The best video game books of 2023
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• What the Polygon staff bought and loved in 2023
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• 10 great indie games you might have missed in 2023
• The 10 best action scenes of 2023
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Explainer: What is so special about TikTok's technology

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IT'S THE APP TOO

Rapid data collection.

ALLOWS EXPLORATION

Mobilises users into groups, chinese advantage.

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Reporting by Josh Ye; Additional reporting by Krystal Hu in San Francisco; Editing by Brenda Goh and Jacqueline Wong

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There Is No TikTok in China, but There Is Douyin. Here’s What It Is.

ByteDance owns both TikTok and Douyin, and although TikTok has more users around the world, Douyin is the company’s cash cow and a China mainstay.

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By Claire Fu and Daisuke Wakabayashi

Reporting from Seoul

In China, there is no TikTok. There is only Douyin.

After President Biden signed a bill on Wednesday forcing Chinese company ByteDance to sell its ownership of TikTok, the United States moved one step closer to an internet without the short video app. The legislation opened the door to a possible ban of the social media platform if TikTok fails to find a U.S. government-approved buyer within a year.

Douyin is also owned by ByteDance . It is a staple of the Chinese internet the way TikTok is in the rest of the world. But because it has no presence outside China, Douyin, which means a “shaking sound” in Chinese, is not as well known globally.

But Douyin is critical to ByteDance’s finances. Its continued success will be a significant factor in how the parent company assesses what it plans to do with TikTok. Will ByteDance succumb to political demands from Washington, or will it refuse to sell TikTok and face the consequences?

Here is an overview of Douyin.

What is Douyin?

Douyin is the most popular short-video app in China, and it is one of the most visited social media platforms in the country. As on TikTok, the videos on Douyin appear in a vertical format and users swipe up to get to the next offering. There are other similarities to TikTok. The Douyin algorithm learns your interests from how you interact with the videos you are shown and feeds you an endless stream of content.

Douyin debuted in September 2016 in China, a year before ByteDance introduced TikTok for overseas markets. Initially, Douyin focused on China’s big cities where young smartphone users were early adopters of new social media. Douyin reached more than 700 million active monthly users in May, meaning it was being used by a majority of China’s internet users, according to QuestMobile, a Chinese data firm.

TikTok has more users on its platform, but Douyin is ByteDance’s cash cow. Roughly 80 percent of ByteDance’s $54 billion revenue in the first half of last year came from China, derived mainly from Douyin, according to The Information , a technology news site. The remaining 20 percent came from overseas markets mainly through TikTok.

How does Douyin make money?

Douyin is a thriving business in China. The biggest chunk of its profit comes from distributing online advertising alongside its library of video content. The research firm eMarketer estimated that Douyin took in $21 billion in advertising revenue in 2023, or about two-thirds of Alphabet’s ad revenue from YouTube.

But it might have even more potential. In China, almost all social media apps have shopping components, and Douyin is no exception. Douyin has opened its own online shopping mall inside the app where vendors sell clothes, electronics, groceries, brand-name goods and discount products. Every transaction generates a commission or service fee for Douyin.

One popular form of commerce is live video streams by influencers who peddle items to audiences — imagine Home Shopping Network meets a daily video blog. The transaction value of shopping conducted through livestreams on Douyin exceeded $200 billion in 2022, according to Statista, a data and business intelligence company in Germany.

E-commerce in China is growing fast, too. Douyin is already the country’s fourth-largest online retailer behind Alibaba, JD.com and Pinduoduo , and it is growing much faster than those more established companies, according to eMarketer. Douyin’s online commerce sales grew an estimated 60 percent in 2023, eMarketer said.

To try to cash in on its traffic, Douyin announced an app called Douyin Mall last month for Android users in mainland China. The app is not in Apple’s App Store.

How is Douyin different from TikTok?

TikTok is available in more than 150 countries and regions in 75 languages, while Douyin can be used only in China. The two apps have many similar features, but they remain separate services. TikTok users can search for accounts all over the world, but they cannot gain access to Douyin accounts in China — and vice versa.

TikTok’s audience tends to be young, but Douyin has a much older user base in China. In fact, it is the most widely used and preferred app among Chinese people over 50 years old, according to a report released by QuestMobile, a research firm. Douyin introduced measures to prevent addiction for seniors, including voice reminders or forced interruptions to people who have been watching for too long.

Douyin has become a crucial platform for the Chinese authorities to disseminate information and propaganda. In 2018 , Douyin teamed up with 11 government departments and media organizations to help improve content production to make their videos more effective at carrying their messages.

A senior official in The PLA Daily, the newspaper of China’s military, once wrote in an essay that there was an urgent need for military media to join Douyin because the platform had become “a new space and a new position for ideological competition between us and the enemies.”

Like other social media services in China, Douyin follows the censorship rules of the Chinese Communist Party. It conscientiously removes video pertaining to topics deemed sensitive or inflammatory by the party, although it has proved a little harder than text-based social media to control.

Among the things that have been restricted or removed so far this year are accounts of economists who spoke negatively about China’s economy , as well as short dramas about the conflicts between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law. The latter seemed to portray interfamily relations in a dramatically negative way.

Claire Fu covers China with a focus on business and social issues in the country. She is based in Seoul. More about Claire Fu

Daisuke Wakabayashi is an Asia business correspondent for The Times based in Seoul, covering economic, corporate and geopolitical stories from the region. More about Daisuke Wakabayashi

I'm Gen Z and spent 7 hours a week on TikTok. I deleted the app and now have more time to do actually fun things.

• A Gen Z reporter decided to delete the TikTok app from her phone.
• The addictive nature of the app's algorithm led to wasted hours on mindless content.
• The reporter is still trying to figure out whether she wants to return to TikTok.

Watching that white musical note disappear from my iPhone screen was more satisfying than any ASMR video I could ever watch.

After a few years of spending about 7 hours a week on arguably the trendiest app of the 2020s, I decided it was time to say goodbye to TikTok — although I'm unsure if it will be a permanent decision.

I created my TikTok account at the pandemic's start while stuck at home with nothing to do. And while the past four years have been filled with thousands of videos I will never remember again, TikTok has made me and my thumb very weary over the past few months.

Two weeks ago, I decided to log out to give my thumbs a break, and so far, it's felt like heaven.

It's not just me: TikTok's audience is no longer growing like it was a few years ago. Business Insider's Alistair Barr posited that young people were growing up and taking on more responsibilities, and TikTok was hindering their productivity.

A supporting statistic is that the app's average monthly users between 18 and 24 declined by nearly 9% in the US from 2022 to 2023, The Wall Street Journal reported recently, citing analytics firm Data.ai.

What was true for me, at least, was that TikTok took hours away from my day. I started thinking about what I could be doing instead: working out, planning future trips, getting better at my hobbies — literally anything else.

However, my addiction may also be a consequence of my job: I report on trends and feel pressure to stay current.

On TikTok, there's been a long-running joke that users of the Zuckerberg-owned TikTok knockoff, Instagram Reels, are always behind on what's cool because whatever you see trending on Reels went out of fashion weeks ago on TikTok.

TikTok videos also frequently drive the discussion on Elon Musk's app X. I learned about this glycine meme after every Gen Z on Earth because I got it from Twitter, not TikTok.

The addicting nature of the app's finely tuned algorithm, analyzed and written about for years, also hooked me. Top Wall Street analysts once compared it to crack cocaine. Although I don't have experience smoking crack, I did find it hard to stay off the app when it was easily accessible.

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Before deciding to delete, I spent 1-2 hours a day scrolling through my feed , gleaning so much information about nothing that mattered. Despite being painfully aware that another cute dog video would not materially improve my life, I would keep mindlessly moving on to the next clip.

So, after a particularly aggressive scroll sesh, I decided I had seen the embarrassing reminder asking me to limit my screen time one too many times and unceremoniously relegated TikTok to the app graveyard.

A better work-life balance

Other Gen Z TikTok addicts who spoke to the Journal shared similar concerns.

20-something Keilah Bruce told the Journal she neglected chores like laundry and dishes to scroll on TikTok. Another, Gautam Mengi, a film student, saw his grades freefall, and he couldn't even take out the trash without the app open.

Luckily, it never got that bad for me, but I never had time for hobbies . I told myself I wanted to start working out more, get back to reading more books on my newly purchased Kindle, and add the final stitches to my many unfinished embroidery projects. But TikTok wouldn't let me.

You may expect a dramatic story about me struggling to fill my time and desperately longing to return to TikTok after deleting the app , but that wasn't the case. I only tried to log on once because a friend sent me a post. It helped that I had forgotten my password and didn't feel like retrieving it.

And I would never want to make a new account and retrain the algorithm. It's like getting out of a long-term relationship — what I had with my original algorithm was real, and I couldn't just jump into something new.

TikTok dupes — like Reels or YouTube Shorts — are not satisfactory replacements. I do find myself scrolling through them for a few minutes a day to get that fix, though.

And if I need to look up information on TikTok , like an influencer's contact information, I limit myself to an account I exclusively use on my work laptop.

Now I do fun things, like go outside and touch grass. I even encountered a rattlesnake on a hike last week (not as fun). Doing these things is even more enjoyable than watching them. Who would've thought? But perhaps most importantly, my overall mental health improved: I don't have that post-scroll regret that makes me feel crappy about spending hours of my life I will never get back.

Will I return?

The choice to return to TikTok may be taken from me anyway, as a potential ban looms , but I'm divided on whether I even want to rejoin the app.

TikTok is a wonderful place to find young people doing inspiring things. I love seeing how our generation uses the app to start and maintain small businesses , enact positive social change , and use their voices to speak up about issues affecting marginalized communities. These are the things I like and will continue to write about.

However, it is also full of hate speech and trolls, and I would argue that the comments can be just as toxic as X at times. I've found that avoiding an endless stream of transphobia , fatphobia , and ableism is good for the soul.

So, for now, I'm off the app — at least until I learn some self-control.

TikTok did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Watch: TikTok could be banned in US after House vote

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