THE APP

TikTok, the app we love almost as much as Collin Brientnall loves Zendaya. That’s right, the controversial social media app for creating short videos that people like to pretend to hate. But we know you all have your secret accounts. Speaking of secret accounts…

THE EXPERIMENT

We employed some of our peers to conduct an experiment into uncovering TikTok’s mysterious algorithm. Upon opening the app, you are introduced to a feed of videos under the title “For You”– videos that the creators at TikTok claim are carefully curated to each account’s watch and like history. However, scrolling through the For You Page can lead one to question the integrity of this algorithm. Time and time again we find ourselves asking, “Does TikTok really think I’ll find this funny?” or “How did this person even get famous?” Sometimes, it seems like just about anything can make it on the For You Page. And that’s exactly what we wanted to test. Could our peers triumph against the enigma that is TikTok’s algorithm? Could we create another Collin Brientnall? Inspired by the mere possibility of a class of 2020 TikTok giant, we went to work. To begin, we came up with 8 categories that we thought would fare well against the algorithm. Then, we carefully selected the people we thought could fill the roles best (except Lucas–he really wanted to be the E-boy). The categories and participants are as follows:

Category 1: Acting, Stella Reimer 

Category 2: E-boy, Lucas Dillard 

Category 3: TikTok couple, Sloane Stoklosa and Andrew DeArellano 

Category 4: Funny (?) boy, Davis Leath 

Category 5: Funny girl, Gabby Ziegler 

Category 6: Story time, Angeline Krupa 

Category 7: E-girl, Lilli Heinrich 

Category 8: Fashion, Mina Schaafsma 

*Special shout out to Susannah Ryan and Riley Haas for dropping out of the challenge and reducing our sample size, therefore making the experiment less reliable.

We then added all of our participants into a group chat and sent out a set of rules that most of them ended up ignoring in the end. 

Here’s the list that we sent to them:

Rules!!!!!

1. You have to post five times total.

2. You have a 1 week period: Tuesday, September Seventeenth, Two Thousand Nineteen  9/17/19) to Tuesday, September Twenty-Fourth, Two Thousand Nineteen (9/24/19).

3. Remain in your assigned category.

4. Background for videos must not be obviously the same school.

5. You can follow whoever you want and can create whatever captions you desire. (We encouraged them to try to make the captions go with their assigned personality so that it looks natural.)

6. You must have approval from Rosie, Jordan, or Josephine before posting.

7. TAKE IT SERIOUSLY THIS IS SERIOUS.

**Note: A few of the participants expressed frustration at the “restricting” one week period, and we ended up extending the due date to Tuesday, October 1st, subsequently upping the video requirement to 6. Thanks, Gabby and Lucas. Davis didn’t have any trouble creating 5 (arguably) postable TikToks in one week, but hey, just give us more data to process.

THE RESULTS

When September 17th rolled around, our puppets went to work. Immediately, Stella and Lucas rose to the top with 1,857 (Lucas) and 2,384 (Stella) views on their first TikToks–but it only went downhill for them from there. On the other hand, most of the accounts encountered moderate fame later on in the game, with Sloane and Andrew’s account taking the lead in views with their third TikTok.

Assigned the category “funny girl,” Gabby Ziegler struggled with staying true to her title while also giving the people what they wanted in order to receive views. Eventually, she reached 2,538 views on her final TikTok, a relatable lip sync video about the college admissions process.  When asked to describe what she learned about the algorithm through her road to stardom, she reflected, “the algorithm only promotes true potential. sometimes. other times it throws collin brientinal on the entire US’s for you page. theres no inbetween.” Additionally, she outlined how her content changed by saying, “its not about the tags or the caption its about how well you can lip sync to last years top 50.” Some thrilling, completely objective insight that helps us interpret our data! Thank you, Gabby.