The New Famous: Quarantine Famous
By ISABELLA KANCZUK ‘23
Virtually all TV and movie production has shut down. Some seasons of shows have had to end early, and soon even the stream of pre-filmed and pre-produced content from networks and studios will trickle to a halt. But one rising sector of entertainment is still going strong: online video creation, in particular, TikTok clips.
In January, TikTok surpassed Whatsapp as the most downloaded app on the Apple App Store. Now, two whole months into many stay-home orders due to COVID-19, millions more have joined the social video platform. According to Music Business Worldwide, during the week of March 16th, the video app was downloaded 2 million times (an 18% increase in downloads from the previous week). Compared to February, app downloads also saw a 27% increase in the first 23 days of March, with 6.2 million downloads. As a result, there are currently more than 800 million users on the app.
For those who are not so familiar with TikTok, I’ll assure you that it is much more than Kesha’s 2009 hit pop single. TikTok presents an alternative version of online sharing, allowing users to create short videos with music, filters, and other features. For not only teens, but also celebrities, parents, and even grandparents in more than 155 countries, TikTok is a completely new subdivision of pop culture. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s cringey, but it’s definitely always addictive; according to Business of Apps, in 2019, users spent an average of 52 minutes per day on the app.
Recently, as the majority of the world’s population has found itself in lockdown and spending more and more time at home, TikTok has been one of the greatest available solaces. Many people who had perhaps been holding out on joining the notoriously addictive app finally joined once they were faced with the prospect of several months spent inside their houses. A handful of TikTokers have recently become “quarantine famous.” When Curtis Roach, for instance, wrote the “bored in the house” song, he never expected it to be duetted and covered millions of times, and even gain the attention of American rapper Tyga, who later recorded a single with him.
Additionally, The Presley family of North Carolina never expected the hashtag #quarantineolympics, which features home challenges such as the toilet paper toss, the quarantine 500 race, and the straw challenge, to have hundreds of search results, and their videos to have more than 24 million views.
Moreover, our very own Bella Mostofi ’23, who gained 1.1 million followers on the app in less than three weeks, says she was definitely shocked by the success of her videos. What prompted the creation of her new account was a challenge she had made with her friends, where whoever got TikTok famous first would win. Nonetheless, she never imagined that one of her videos would get over 19 million views, or that she would actually win the challenge.
To conclude, I wonder what the future will hold for these newly-famous TikTokers? I guess we all have to wait and see…