There’s a popular social media app that’s got many LHS students hooked.

TikTok is an iOS and Android social media video app for creating and sharing short lip-sync, comedy, and talent videos. TikTok says their mission is “to inspire creativity and bring joy” to their users worldwide. 

The app was launched in 2017 by ByteDance, for markets outside of China. Over the years it has been purchased by different companies and has evolved into a more humorous and light hearted page where teenagers can relate to each other’s lives.

 At first TikTok was considered merely as a joke because many people thought it was “over the top.”

“I thought it was really weird and actually the worst of humanity,” said sophomore Lillian Przybyl. “You see YouTubers react to it only showed the worst parts of TikTok.” 

However, TikTok eventually became enjoyable for friends to make dances with each other and put together skits online. 

In 2018, TikTok blew up the internet with 104 million downloads in Apple’s app store and from then on it just kept prospering. TikTok is valued at a massive 75 billion dollars. People on this app strive to become “TikTok famous” by reaching thousands maybe even millions of views.  

 Dean Rodalakis, a junior at LHS, enjoys making TikToks simply because they are light-hearted and entertaining videos to laugh at. The TikTok depicts Dean throwing packaged cheddar cheese at his girlfriend for a day “until he hits 10K”. In the TikTok, Dean’s girlfriend is sitting on her bed casually looking at her phone. Suddenly Dean throws a piece of cheese on her face and she laughs in shock. 

”It was like my fourth TikTok I’ve ever made,” he said.

 Not having much experience with TikTok, Dean did not expect this sudden sight at fame. 

“I thought about throwing cheese at my girlfriend because why not,” Rodolakis said. 

Although Rodolakis may have just created this TikTok because it was amusing, the public could not have had enough of it. From there his TikTok “exploded,” as he said, and “the first night it hit 100,000 views and then two days later it hit 1 million.” 

Rodolakis’s TikTok currently sits at a whopping 2.6 million views. So I asked Dean how he felt knowing millions of people watched a video he made…”I feel like I didn’t care a lot because I got such fast success since it was like my fourth ever TikTok; like it was cool but I’m still just a person.” Even though Dean got millions of views on one of his TikToks he still says he does them as jokes and continues to feel pleasured by making them.

I asked some students in Ludlow High School to elaborate on their thoughts of TikTok and how its evolved into a worldwide phenomenon. 

Lilly Przybyl, a sophomore at LHS, downloaded TikTok to see if the rumors around the comedic videos were true. “After I dug through all the bad stuff, I found that it’s pretty decent comedy, like trying to live up to vine but in its own way… and if you find the good stuff and have a dark sense of humor, it’s pretty great” Przybl said. 

Bretton Haryasz, a junior at LHS, found entertainment in creating TikToks with his friends and watching them in his free time. “My favorite creator on TikTok would have to be Salice Rose because I relate to the TikToks that she makes and they are all really funny” Haryasz said. 

The overall consensus that I came to was that people download TikTok out of pure curiosity and excitement to enjoy videos with their friends and it is a creative way to produce comedy through a social media platform.