A voice laughs maniacally. Logan Paul sways his hips. Swipe down. A voice laughs maniacally. Two college-age men, both shirtless, grab their crotches and sway. Swipe. A voice laughs maniacally. Miley Cyrus lip-syncs along with the lyrics “Stupid boy think that I need him.”
This was the experience of being on TikTok in the fall of 2019. While that grating laugh seemed, at first, to belong to the app, you could discover, with some research, that it came from the mouth of Ashton Casey, an artist who raps—under the alias Ashnikko—about clits and cutting off dicks like she’s writing the script for the next Human Centipede movie. Within just three weeks of its first upload, her song “stupid,” featuring Yung Baby Tate, was the No. 2 most-used song on TikTok with 1.3 million video uses. And in the months that followed, “stupid” became inextricable from the TikTok experience. You couldn’t scroll through the app without hearing “Wet! Wet! Wet!”
On TikTok, it’s common to hear the same song over and over. If a sound inspires one user to create a video with it, it will inspire another and another, until it amasses hundreds, then thousands, of videos that use the same sound. It’s a kind of exposure that reaches far beyond the capability of radio, YouTube, Spotify, or any other music-discovery platform, past or present.
Denne historien er fra November 23 - December 6, 2020-utgaven av New York magazine.
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Denne historien er fra November 23 - December 6, 2020-utgaven av New York magazine.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Early and Often: David Freedlander - Momentum vs. Machine The Trump and Harris campaigns battle it out for every last vote.
WIth two weeks left to go, the contours of the 2024 presidential election are clear: Both campaigns need voters who usually don’t vote, and Kamala Harris needs to bring the Democratic coalition, including its Trump-curious members, back home.While the Republican side plans to spend the remaining days of the contest trying to lure low-propensity voters to the polls, the Harris team will attempt to persuade voters of color to return to its side and will try to increase numbers among white voters in previously red suburbs.
Drowning in Slop - A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage-and it's only going to get worse.
SLOP started seeping into Neil Clarke's life in late 2022. Something strange was happening at Clarkesworld, the magazine. Clarke had founded in 2006 and built into a pillar of the world of speculative fiction. Submissions were increasing rapidly, but “there was something off about them,” he told me recently. He summarized a typical example: “Usually, it begins with the phrase ‘In the year 2250-something’ and then it goes on to say the Earth’s environment is in collapse and there are only three scientists who can save us. Then it describes them in great detail, each one with its own paragraph. And then—they’ve solved it! You know, it skips a major plot element, and the final scene is a celebration out of the ending of Star Wars.” Clarke said he had received “dozens of this story in various incarnations.”
The City Politic- The Other Eric Adams Scandal The NYPD shot a fare evader, a cop, and two bystanders. He defends it.
On Sunday, September 15, Derell Mickles hopped a turnstile, got asked to leave by cops, then entered the subway again ten minutes later through an emergency exit. This was at the Sutter Avenue L station, out by his mother's house, five stops from the end of the line. Police said they noticed he was holding a folded knife. They followed him up the stairs to the elevated train, asking him 38 times to drop the weapon.
Can the Media Survive?
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A Matter of Perspective
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Creator, Destroyer
A retrospective reveals an architect's vision, optimism, and supreme arrogance.
In Praise of Bad Readers
In a time of war, there is a danger in surveying the world as if it were a novel.
Trust the Kieran Culkin Process
First, he nearly dropped out of Oscar hopeful A Real Pain. Then he convinced Jesse Eisenberg to change the way he directs.
The Funniest Vampires on TV
What We Do in the Shadows is coming to an end. Its idiosyncratic brand of comedy may be too.
