How TikTok Became the New Home of Internet Banter

In January of 2017, a tragedy befell the world. Vine – the app that gave the world such hits as “FRE SHA VOCA DO”, the lawnmower flying to “Emotions” by Mariah Carey and “eyebrows on fleek, the fuck” – was closed down. With it went an entire virtual world of pure, perfectly distilled banter. 

Because Vine videos were limited to a length of seven seconds, one of the primary things you could do with them was to produce tight, crisp jokes. Laughs were built into the app in a way that was, at the time, unique on social media. It was the internet’s primary source for original humour – you couldn’t scroll Twitter (which owned the platform) or Instagram without encountering a re-posted Vine.

When Vine shut down, the internet had a humour hole to fill. Since 2017, Instagram and Twitter comedians have plugged it with observational “front facing camera” bits, while banter accounts – which often focus on regions, like “Scottish Banter” – crossposted videos across various social platforms. Sometimes footage was ripped from Snapchat, but for all everyone tried, nothing quite recreated the freewheeling spirit of Vine.

That’s until, in a blaze of glory, integrated editing and audio features, along came TikTok.  

The story of TikTok’s success in 2020 is, as all things in 2020 are, inextricably linked to the coronavirus pandemic. As senior Vulture writer E. Alex Jung noted, “It was TikTok [...] that became the most fertile storytelling medium of the pandemic – accomplishing what Quibi could not, which was to create bite-size entertainment people actually watched. In place of top-down decision-making, a more horizontal body – collaborative in an accidental and serendipitous way – appeared. TikToks went on Twitter, which went on Instagram.” 

While TikTok’s popularity had grown wildly since its US launch in 2018, it was only during the pandemic that it started to really appeal to users outside of its primarily Gen Z demographic. People found themselves terminally bored in the middle of lockdown in March, and by April TikTok had surpassed 2 billion downloads worldwide. Its focus on short videos, as well as built-in creativity tools – green screen capabilities, endless filters, the functionality to seamlessly include song snippets in videos – quickly made it the new nexus of original online humour; the place whence lols are made flesh. 

In the UK, this shift has been palpable for internet users. Banter accounts, which used to be influential on Twitter and Facebook, feel much less pervasive. Instead, we frequently see TikToks repurposed on Twitter and Instagram as reaction videos or memes, of which the app is a veritable buffet. What TikTok shares with Vine – and where it differs from other apps – is that banter is part of its DNA. Accounts which collect and aggregate banter are no longer necessary, because on TikTok, banter is everywhere.

On the app, banter manifests itself in many ways. There are musical trends, like the one set to OMC’s “How Bizarre”, where creators establish a situation – smoking in the house, your mum asking your 14-year-old self why her vodka tastes like water – and then dismiss it as “bizarre” when asked about it, or the one where creators imagine themselves as the “main character” of a movie, before quickly snapping back to reality as Lana Del Rey’s “Mariners Apartment Complex” plays in the background.

There are what are basically Architectural Digest tour parodies by students (these tend to be titled “Things in our uni house that just make sense”, followed by a guided tour including stops such as “the shower, which screams and drips”). And there are simply videos of people talking into their phones, doing front-facing camera comedy – though TikTok’s added editing features helps to elevate them.

The “banter account” that previously ruled Facebook and Twitter is less influential on TikTok: there are only 127 million views on the #ukbanter hashtag, compared to other trends more specific and organic to the app, which get views in the billions. But regional or national banter exists in the form of videos where UK creators explain UK slang or banter for users from other countries, speaking to TikTok’s global approach, the influence YouTube has had even on short-form video and the fact that Gen Z – the first generation to have used the internet since they were young children, and, crucially, to have smartphones in school – is the most globalised generation ever.  

In 2020, then, internet banter has a new face. With lols in the very bones of the app, banter is not a specific hashtag or account. On TikTok, it is simply a way of life. 

@hiyalauren