TikTokTrends week: 19
November 30th - December 6th
Hi!
Welcome to TikTokTrends, week 19.
This week I will be talking about #MelissaCarone, #BidenVotes,#MacsPublicHouse, and #JimCarrey.
Let's start!
#MelissaCarone
On Wednesday, Trump campaigns star witness, Melissa Carone, went in front of the Michigan House Oversight Committee together with Rudy Giuliani and testified about numerous baseless claims. Carone insisted that she had witnessed thousands of ballots being counted twice and that the poll book was off by "over 100.000" votes. Videos of Carone speaking went viral on social media platforms. This video alone has gotten over 22 million views on Twitter, and it is one of the more bizarre interactions of the hearing.
Carone was deemed 'not credible' by a Michigan judge before going in front of the Michigan House Oversight Committee.
The video above was shared by NowThisPolitics and has garnered over 300 thousand views. The hashtag MelissaCarone has gotten over two million views, and hundreds of videos created using the hashtag. Videos on TikTok about the testimony ranged from reenacting Carone, saying that she was drunk during her testimony, to making fun of the Giuliani team for Carone being their star witness. SNL has also made a skit about the interaction, which is being shared on TikTok.
Videos of Carone were mainly shared within the democratic circle on the platform. Making fun of her speech, discrediting Carone and the Giuliani team, and commenting on the hearing were done primarily by democratic content creators. Creators from the other side of the aisle can be seen sharing the back-and-forths Giuliani had with the Chair of the House, adding sounds to create a 'mic-drop' effect. Other videos of Giuliani speaking to the House were also shared by conservative content creators.
This is an ongoing trend that I am seeing with conservative TikTok'ers. They tend to skip and cherry-pick these types of issues. That's not to say democratic content creators don't do the same, but these days, with all of the voter fraud issues going around, right-wing creators can be seen either not posting at all or posting a small part of it without giving their audience the full picture.
Out of the 100+ right-wing content creators I follow on TikTok, only a handful created a video about this hearing, and those videos were about Giuliani, not Carone.
#BidenVotes
Republicans are still disputing the number of votes Joe Biden received. Recently the number of views Biden's Thanksgiving video got was used as proof that Biden could not have gotten 80 million votes. Videos explaining this were shared by conservative news organizations, and Trump himself tweeted about the stream’s view count.
The clip above was posted by an account with the name Boss_Updates. The conservative content creator can be seen posting anti-Biden and pro-Trump videos on his account. The video was viewed over 130 thousand times and had over 1200 comments, mostly in support of the creator.
The clip features an article by The Gateway Pundit. The article uses a screenshot taken from a live stream Biden had on Thanksgiving Day. The live stream was also not linked in the article; all that was linked is a Tweet, with the same exact picture showing a live viewer count of 1000 people. This, of course, is not true.
The Gateway Pundit is rated at a 20/100 by NewsGuard and is rated as ‘right-wing’ by AllSides. The lack of sources and the lack of background information about the live stream leads me to believe it to be false. First of all, there is no specification about which live stream they are talking about. Biden mainly used Periscope to stream his speech; the image provided by the Gateway Pundit seems to be a Facebook stream. This could mean that the image is from a Facebook page that re-shared the stream, hence getting a lower number of views. As the Reuters fact-check states, another explanation can be the screenshot being taken at an early moment during the live stream, hence not having many viewers.
The original Biden stream on Periscope has now gotten over 990,000 views; on YouTube, the same video was watched 110,000 times, and on Facebook, the video has currently accumulated over 500,000 views. So, no, Biden's Thanksgiving address was not viewed by a thousand people, rather it collectively reached over 1.5 million views.
Presidential candidates are not influencers; their success is not solely based on their online engagement and view counts. Many of Trump's videos are getting under one million views on Twitter. Does that delegitimize the 74 million who voted for him? No, it does not.
#MacsPublicHouse
Owners of the Mac's Public House in Staten Island have declared the bar an "autonomous zone" due to the closures and the mandates that the state has put on restaurants and bars. The pub has been a hotspot for anti-mask, anti-COVID, and Trump supporters this week. Hundreds of people were seen gathering and protesting in front of the pub.
Heshy Tischler, a conservative radio host who has recently gained attention on TikTok due to his anti-Cuomo and anti-De Blasio stance, and who was on the front lines at Borough Park when the masks were being burnt in the street, posted the video above. The video has now gained over 11 thousand views. Tichler is also an anti-mask advocator and has been promoting going out and having a 'good time' to his followers.
Tischler was one of the first people I saw on TikTok to go to Mac's Pub and share his thoughts on the bar. Since then, the protests have grown. This video of the protests in front of the bar has been watched over 300 thousand times. Protesters can be heard chanting "F** Cuomo" and "Open Up!" A call to action can also be found on TikTok from Tuesday, a day before the protests got larger.
The bar opposed Gov. Cuomo's zoning plans when the bar was put in the orange zone due to serving patrons inside and spiking prices. The bar was reported to have been fined in the past for operating past the curfew and serving guests inside the bar.
Early Sunday morning, the bar co-owner Danny Presti reportedly hit a deputy with his car while trying to flee from the police. He was later stopped and taken under custody for a second time. The pub co-owner has also created a GoFundMe page and, so far, has received 83 thousand dollars. On their official Facebook page, there is another call to action for Tomorrow, Monday the 7th.
On TikTok, the hashtag MacsPublicHouse has gotten over 130 thousand views and is being shared with #CuomoSucks, #OpenUp, and #StandUp.
#JimCarry
Heather Shaw has recently gone viral on TikTok by claiming to be Jim Carrey's daughter, then changing it to being his son. Of course, it is all a joke. Shaw is a comedian that makes a great Jim Carrey impression. Take a look:
The video has now gotten over 3.5 million views and over 3500 comments. Many commenters say how much Shaw looks like Carrey and how great of an impression she is making. Shaw has seven other videos, where she impersonates Carrey and plays out one of his scenes. I especially enjoy hearing the 'Alrighty then' quote that Carrey is known for!
Carrey was recently trending on Twitter and TikTok after he played Joe Biden in an SNL sketch with Alec Baldwin playing Donald Trump. Carrey has yet to create a TikTok account. Maybe one day…
In Other News:
TikTok has gotten a new court day: December 14th. The appeals court has scheduled a hearing to listen to the administration’s and TikTok's arguments on an order that Blocked the TikTok ban in September. The Trump administration's final deadline for Bytedance to sell its shares was on Friday the 4th. 2 days have passed, and no action has yet been taken by the administration. A new extension is not likely to be given to the company, and tech reporters say it is unlikely that the US will enforce the deadline.
3-minute TikTok videos? TikTok is reported to be testing a longer video format, 3 minutes to be exact. A screenshot from an account shows that TikTok is rolling out 3-minute upload capabilities. Currently, the longest video can be 60 seconds long. We have seen companies dial-up their content limitations. YouTube once had a 10-minute limit on its videos, and Twitter, 140 characters. These can change, but I don't know how I feel about 3-minute TikTok videos; it seems a little long to me.
Intruder! While a content creator, Hannah Viverette, was filming herself dancing, an unknown man walked in from her second-floor balcony. She quickly ran away from the man, asking him to get out, and opened her outside door to get help from her neighbor. The encounter was filmed and uploaded on TikTok. The man, Angel Moises Rodriguez-Gomez, 36, was later caught and charged. Viverette explained to Fox 5 that she recognized the man as a nearby resident soon after the incident, adding that the man had previously made advances towards her and had been watching her from his truck.
That is all for this week! Please share this newsletter if you enjoyed reading it. And don't be shy to send me an email about what you think I should cover, or if I have missed anything.
Thank you for reading, hope to see you next week, on Sunday!