by Sydney Birkhahn & Rachel Musman
A social media platform has allowed a student at IHS to go viral. This app is called Tik Tok, in which short videos are posted, often with music, and can be liked, viewed, and commented on. Featured on the app is the “For You Page” which is a feed individualized to the account owner, and based on who they follow and what types of videos they watch and like. As the humorous videos are so popular, when Xavier James, a senior at IHS, posted a funny video, it made it on the “For You Page” and went viral.
Similar to the other 500 million Tik Tok users, Xavier got his account just to watch and comment on other people’s posts. Originally, the app was a joke to him and many others and then it became addicting. Xavier spent around three months watching videos before making his own, which ultimately led to a viral video. His viral Tik Tok got over 131,000 likes, and over 517,700 views.
When asked about his initial reaction concerning his video going viral, he admitted he was caught off guard.
“I definitely didn’t expect the video to go to the extreme of getting over half a million views,” said Xavier.
He believes his video was set apart from others, and gained popularity because he used a popular sound for the video. The sound became popular as it is a meme on other social media platforms, such as Instagram.
This new app has quickly become the top downloaded app on the Apple App Store for the fifth consecutive quarter. According to the New York Times, Tik Tok is “rewriting the world.”
