TikTok: An app where you can become famous for doing anything.
Can you imagine becoming famous overnight for just posting a video on the social media platform TikTok? This is what happened to TikTok star Charli D’Amelio. She is an 18-year-old TikToker who became known for her dance videos on the platform in 2019. Before she became famous, she was a competitive dancer who lived in Connecticut. After some fame, she moved to Los Angeles, California for business opportunities. The majority of her TikTok content and theme is dancing, which she has been doing since she was three years old. Her intended audience is Gen Z, the 13 to 19-year-olds. She directs a lot of her videos to a mature enough audience like them. Younger children might know Charli and her videos, but they are not her intended audience since, in her talking videos, she acts as if she is talking to people her age. Charli D’Amelio falls under some theories explained in class like standardization, male gaze, and coolhunting.
Her first video to gain major attention from the audience was a duet, side-by-side video with user Move With Joy posted in July 2019. This video consists of Charli copying dance moves from Move With Joy. The style of the video was D’Amelio dancing, smiling, and having a good time. This dancing video is the style of videos that made D’Amelio successful and well-known. This video consisted of imitating Move With Joy’s simple dance moves. The message of the video is to show people that they do not need to be professional dancers to know how to dance. Her audience can follow these eight easy steps and dance just like Charli. This video was the first viral TikTok of hers, and she still does not know why it blew up the way it did. It might have been the TikTok algorithm, but she is not exactly sure. Since this video, she began gaining popularity and following and became famous. Charli now has a television show with her family, which shows how much fame she got from her TikTok career. Unfortunately, the other user, Move With Joy, did not become famous because of this TikTok, but she is more known.
Fig. 1. Charli D’Amelio side by side Move With Joy in her first viral TikTok.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7WCoDo7iTw
Charli D’Amelio falls under standardization explained by Adorno and Horkheimer. The definition of standardization that Adorno and Horkheimer give us is that “under monopoly, all mass culture is identical” (Adorno, T. & Horkheimer, M., 1944, p. 1). This means that all creations are just an alternative form of the same item (Adorno, T. & Horkheimer, M., 1944). In almost every one of Charli D’Amelio’s TikTok videos, she is doing the same thing, dancing with music in the background. She has the same type and theme of videos on her account. D’Amelio might think that since she is doing different dances, she is giving different content, but this is exactly what Adorno and Horkheimer mean because she is only doing variations of the same action. The video linked above is just one of the many that are standardized. This video might be unique, but if you compare it to the rest of her repertoire, you can see that it is the same style of video. She uses the same music and similar dance steps, among others. TikTok’s algorithm shows specific videos to distinct people on their For You Page. TikTokers, including Charli, quickly realized that the algorithm likes “stitch” videos, and the algorithm promotes them. Content creators started to do these types of videos because they were going to be liked by others. They know that viewers enjoy the same kind of content that is already popular.
Zeisler (2008) defines the male gaze as the idea that images are portrayed as a man might see them. It indicates that women are seen from a man’s point of view, even if women see it (Zeisler, 2008). Charli D’Amelio’s TikTok page is an example of this. Charli’s video and women dancing on the screen are an example of the male gaze perpetrating which kind of TikTok videos get famous. Women want to be seen as sexy and cool to be popular and well-liked. There are so many of the same dancing videos because men and women feel that is what they need to do to get attention and gain popularity. On top of that, in this specific video, Charli is not even wearing tight clothing, and she is still being sexualized. You can even be sexualized while wearing a hoodie.
Coolhunting can be represented by Charli D’Amelio. Coolhunting is the intuitive process of making predictions about what will be popular as defined by Powers (2019). Cool hunters are perceived as cool, and they can determine what is cool or not (Powers, 2019). It means that coolhunters are looking for styles to make trendy. Looking for trends to make trendy. It relates to my example of Charli because the first viral video of her became cool because she did it. She takes this dance and makes it popular because she is young, cute, and has a white skin tone. It represents a larger pattern of white creators taking dances or dance moves from marginalized creators. TikTokers like Charli are bringing the marginalized to the cool.
To conclude, Charli D’Amelio is a famous TikTok star that relates to some of the theories learned in class from Adorno & Horkheimer, Powers, and Zeisler. She is the perfect example of standardization, the male gaze, and coolhunting. Charli’s first viral TikTok copying dance moves shows similarities with the style of videos she does currently. Which are mostly dancing videos where she appears as having fun and cheerful. D’Amelio can decide what is and will become popular or cool, as coolhunting describes. As well as she can decide what videos to post so that she does not get the male gaze. And have a variation of her videos because most of her videos are alike, so she should make different types of videos.
Works Cited
Zeisler, A. (2008). Feminism and pop culture. New York, NY: Seal Press. P. 1-21.
Adorno, T. & Horkheimer, M. (1944). Dialectic of Enlightenment. P. 1-12. McNeal, S (2022).
Powers, D. (2019). On trend: The business of forecasting the future. Chapter 3. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. (Annenberg Reserve HF 5415.32 P695 2019).
Chali D’Amelio & Move With Joy & YouTube. (2019, Nov 29). Charli D'amelio - Move with Joy: Tik Tok. YouTube. Retrieved Nov 13, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7WCoDo7iTw
Tenbarge, K. and Press-Reynolds, K. (2021, Sep 24). Inside the life of 17-year-old Charli D'Amelio. Insider. Retrieved Nov 13, 2022, from https://www.insider.com/charli-d-amelio-bio-how-old-tiktok-famous-renegade-super-bowl-2020#some-of-her-most-popular-tiktoks-are-her-dancing-to-the-song-lottery-renegade-more-commonly-known-as-just-the-renegade-3
Commenter: Gabriela Solomiany
ReplyDeleteHi Shelly,
I really enjoyed your blog post about the social media platform, TikTok, and more specifically, about the TikTok star Charli D’Amelio. I love the way you started off your piece, it gave me a clearer idea of what the rest of the post would be discussing.
In your blog post you talk about how Charlie D’Amelio, a regular 19 year old girl became a TikTok sensation by posting a duet video on the app in 2019. You express that Charli never truly understood why the video blew up in the first place. After all, she was just a regular girl from Connecticut. As I read your post I though about Jenna Drenton’s article, West Elm Caleb and the rise of the TikTok tabloid. In this article Drenton speaks about TikTok sensation stories and the TikTok tabloid. I believe that Drenton’s piece connects with your blog post because the author explains how TikTok stars are made and how TikTok sensation stories emerge. It is all through the TikTok tabloid in which users “collectively manufacture” and exaggerate or dramatize stories and videos like an investigation (Drenton, 2022, p.1). Moreoever, Drenton explains that unlike a traditional tabloid, a TikTok tabloid “targets every day people” (Drenton, 2022, p.1). I believe that Jenna Drenton’s analysis on the TikTok tabloid do indeed explain Charli D’Amelio’s sudden fame because it explains that this new media tabloid watches regular people, like Charli, and dramatizes it.
I think incorporating this article would have been a good way to talk about Charli’s fame but your piece was a very interesting and fun read regardless.
Commenter: Rebecca Anderson
ReplyDeleteI thought the chosen topic was super relevant and the connections to topics we’ve discussed in class were clear!
One author whose work I think is also relevant in analyzing the rise of Charli D’Amelio is Walter Benjamin. Much of his discussion of concepts related to mechanical reproduction apply to the recent popularity of many TikTok stars. His section where he describes the difference between stage actors and screen actors was interesting – particularly where he talks about how screen actors’ work is different because a camera operator shoots from different angles and positions, so the final product is a certain point of view on what is acted out in real life/is not “the whole thing”. I struggle here to figure out which bucket Charli D’Amelio falls into – she is not a stage actor, because her TikToks aren’t live performances. Yet she also doesn’t fit this description of screen actors, nor do many other TikTokers – the app is unique in that (it seems, at least) influencers record on regular mobile phones and lean their phones against a surface (instead of having a person filming and moving a camera).
Benjamin also discusses the idea that screen actors are different from stage actors in that they cannot adjust their performance based on audience reaction. In this context, TikTokers like Charli D’Amelio more clearly fall into the category of screen actors, because there is no audience watching as a 15-second dance video is filmed, and there is no audience reaction until after the entire work is completed and posted. It is interesting, though, because TikTokers will interact with audience reactions to their videos – for example, someone might comment on Charli D’Amelio’s TikTok and she might write a comment back or even make a video responding to the comment. Here, the lines between what is a work of art and what isn’t are blurred – is a simple response to a comment a “work of art” for someone whose job is to be an influencer?
Irene Pak
ReplyDeleteI found your piece very insightful, as a way to really look into the roots of TikTok Star, Charli D’Amelio in the realms of Adorno and Horkheimer, Zeisler, and Powers. After reading your post, I could not help but think about Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936). I wanted to point out the reshaping and reproduction of independent artists and dancers as actions that would destroy the authenticity and aura of the art itself. A key aspect of TikTok that I think many forgo is the lack of tagging or crediting the original work of the creator of the dance. I have seen countless times in the comment sections of Charli D’Amelio’s dance TikToks stating, “DC? [dance credits?].” I find large TikTok creators like Charli D’Amelio to be commodifying, reproducing, and exploiting the art of dance itself which has been cultivated by choreographers over years of experience. Benjamin also states that “mechanical reproduction is inherent in the very technique of film production… [which] permits in the most direct way and virtually causes mass distribution” (Benjamin, 1936, p. 65). TikTok is simply a platform for individuals to film themselves and facilitates this mass distribution of the dance/remake. As you stated, Charli D’Amelio moved to LA from Connecticut after gaining fame and profiting off of her followers and fellow dancers. I think an essential piece of analyzing TikTok and massive creators’ roots is to look at the reproduction of content and putting it out of reach for the original itself. By looking at Walter Benjamin, I find the art and roots of TikTok creators very profound itself and I thank you for bringing this to our attention.
Commenter: Emmy Keogh
ReplyDeleteShelly,
I’ve loved what you’ve written about Charli D'amelio's rise to fame. I remember seeing that first video on my own For You Page. I mindlessly double tapped (as I do for most videos on that app), and didn’t think anything of it. It wasn’t until I kept seeing people duet her duet for me to start to recognize her on my For You Page. Then, she was everywhere. I believe it was a case of right place, right time, because as you pointed out, even she doesn’t know why that video blew up the way it did. That video went viral only a few months before Covid sent us all online, so it was perfect timing for her to grow a presence on the app. I completely agree with your take on Standardization that her feed is the exact same, consisting of different variations of an 8-count of dance choreography to a trending pop song.
To add to your Zeisler point, I remember when people were counting down the days until her 18th birthday, as she would finally be legal. The male gaze controls the algorithm, pushing certain videos of young, pretty girls to the top. Charli is a victim to the male gaze, but it is also the claim to her fame, so in an odd way it worked in her favor. So much so that she is now, in my opinion, an influencer. Chrystal Abidin describes influencers as everyday, ordinary internet users who post personal content and who gather a large following through social media. She also adds that influencers monetize their content from time to time and help companies go viral. In some of Charli’s dance videos, she can be seen doing product placement and tagging companies in her caption with a “#ad” tagged on at the end. She makes money every time she partners with a company, and this adds to your point of being a coolhunter. Not only can Charli predict what will become cool, she can also start trends herself.
It’s so interesting to think about how she rose to fame so quickly, and I appreciate your blog post for going in depth on the video that started it all!
Hi Shelly,
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting post about Charli D’Amelio! Thanks so much for sharing!
I think Charli is also a strong example of the Tik Tok Tabloid phenomenon that Jenna Drenton described. When she became famous, she was an ordinary upper-middle class 15 year old girl, and she quickly became a source of dramatized, sensationalized entertainment for the entire world of Tik Tok. In the early days of her fame, Charli was a victim of Drenton’s concept of sous-veillance, which is surveillance conducted by ordinary people. One example of this that I remember is when someone took a video of Charli vaping in a restaurant and posted it on Tik Tok. Vaping is an ordinary practice for many teenagers, but the video of Charli went viral due to her popularity. Many people stitched the video of her to react, expressing anger at her for being a bad influence and corrupting her younger fans. This reflects Drenton’s analysis of the temporality of Tik Tok: Ordinary people were able to interact with the video of her in real time and engage with the conversation about her vaping habit, increasing the virality of the clip. At the time, Charli was newly famous and didn’t have a management team to help her handle the pushback she got from the video, and she reported that all of the hate took a major toll on her mental health. This reflects Drenton’s emphasis on the implications of tabloiding the lives of ordinary people: Like Charli, they typically don’t have a team to help them rebound from it. Like many other ordinary people, even a creator like Charli who makes seemingly unproblematic dance videos can be tabloidized when she becomes popular enough.
-- Katie Bartlett
Commenter: Lia Simmons
ReplyDeleteShelly,
I really enjoyed reading your piece in diving into one of the most known names of TikTok. I appreciated the fact that you gave Charli some credit of her being a dancer from a young age that sometimes gets looked over when people talk about her rise to fame. I think you really nailed her target audience for most of her brand deals ex: Dunkin, Hollister, and Morphe. Are really more targeted to a teenage audience. I really liked how you also touched on the disconnect in the way white content creators can more easily gain fame than people of color.
When reading your blog post the first thing that came to mind was Graeme Turners' article Approaching Celebrity Studies. In this article Turner talks about something called "the celebrity-commodity" the celebrity commodity is when a celebrity themselves can turn into the product to others and can be manufactured marketed and traded as so. (Turner, 2010, P. 14) And this has happened to Charli D' Amelio. When they do giveaways or have fans interact with Charli's content just to win being able to spend a day with her. Here she becomes the product. She takes brand deals that are not problematic and relate to her target audience here being marketed in a certain way to align with the morals and draw in more teenage audience. Turner mentions that "celebrity is also a cultural formation that has a social function."(Turner,2010, P.16) When #BlackLivesMatter was at its height she changed her profile pick to a picture of a #BlackLives Matter sign to show her support to the movement to show that she has done her part socially but also to not face backlash for not doing anything.
Hi Shelly,
ReplyDeleteI really found this post about Charli D'Amelio very interesting!
In particular, I love your use of Zeisler's male gaze, Powers's extension of coolhunting, and Adorno and Horkheimer's standardization to explain how she rose to fame to begin with.
For me personally, I think you can go beyond her rise to fame and explain why she is still popular using Crystal Abidin's ideas of intimacy and perceived interconnectedness. In regards to Charli, she can be considered an influencer, or one who has a large following online (Abidin, 2015). Of course, Charli is very popular, but her followers must feel some sort of intimate connection with her if she wants to remain popular. If not, people may not pay any attention to her past the initial burst of fame that she started with. This is especially true when considering that Adorno and Horkheimer would argue that she demonstrates the idea of standardization since she is a form of mass culture that is identical to everything else (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1944). With her dance videos and the usual videos that she does being identical to what everyone else is doing, including the video you mentioned that made her famous, then she must do something to set herself apart in order to maintain her online fame. Considering that Charli has a TV show about her life now, makes videos about what her life is like, and tries to communicate with her fans on a regular basis, one can argue that she is setting herself apart by offering her fans an idea of perceived interconnectedness, or a one-sided relationship that gives viewers the false sense that she is intimately sharing aspects of their lives (Abidin, 2015). As such, Charli has created a seemingly intimate relationship were her fans feel like she is intimately sharing her life with them when in reality she is just trying to benefit from the success and continue to build a large following as an influencer (Abidin, 2015). This false sense of intimacy that she has created with her fans is ultimately what allows for her to stay popular since her fans will constantly attend to anything she does with the feeling that everything she does is for them and the relationship that they have with her. As such, this in turn allows for her to take the initial male gaze, the coolhunting, and the standardization of mass culture that made her popular in the first place and stay popular.
-Dominic Woods
Hi Shelly,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this blog post about Charli D’Amelio, especially because she is someone who I always hear about on the news and from friends, but because as you mentioned, her videos are geared at 13-19 year olds, I would not consider myself a fan. It’s still crazy to me how her and her sister essentially became famous overnight, moved to California to pursue careers, and are now super famous celebrities. It actually reminds me of our most recent class reading and discussion about celebrity news, and if it really counts as news or not, as well as the definitions of celebrity provided by Graeme Turner. Charli D’Amelio can open a discussion about Turner’s definition of celebrity as discourse, which states that “those who have been subject to the representational regime of celebrity are reprocessed” and that “to be celebritized…changes how you are consumed and what you can mean”. Charli D’Amelio rose to fame very quickly in the early days of Tik Tok and has now become a superstar, reprocessed by the industry. She takes on a new meaning as a person by way of being not an everyday individual anymore. You mentioned Adorno and Horkheimer and the concept of everything eventually becoming folded into the culture industry, and I think the Turner reading ties in nicely with that conceptually.
As far as if news about Charli is news, many could argue that because there is no reason to care about her everyday life that it is not real news, but as we discussed in class, celebrity news is news, albeit just a different kind.
-Isabella DiCampli
Hi Shelly! Great job on your blog post, I think your connections to the readings were very strong. As I was reading your piece, I began to think about Abidin’s piece, Communicative Intimacies. In this paper, Abidin introduces the idea that influencers purposefully control “interactions with followers by extending revelations into the backstage “behind the scenes” and the use of personal voice to convey intimacy.” Although I don’t consistently keep up with Charli’s TikToks, I do know that she frequently makes “get ready with me” style videos and short vlogs which give her fans an insight into her life beyond the clips of her dancing. Abidin establishes that by doing this, influencers make their followers feel like they are constantly sharing their personal lives. As a result, Charli comes off as authentic, which in turn, makes them feel more connected to her. Another way Charli’s displays this idea of perceived interconnectedness is through her live streams. When Charli participates in a live video, her fans are able to interact with her in real time by sending comments — which she usually responds to as she reads them. This also makes her followers feel as if they have a deeper connection with the young influencer. While it is great that Charli is able to connect with her fans on a more personal level, I think it is especially important that her fans respect that certain aspects of her life need to be kept private.
ReplyDeleteLiliana Dávila
Dear Shelly Faskha,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this blog post about Charli D’Amelio and more specifically how you were able to incorporate concepts from Adorno and Horkheimer, Zeisler, and Powers to analyze Charli’s rise to fame as a Tiktok celebrity in popular culture.
I happened to find a lot of similarities with some of the points mentioned in your blog post compared to mine which focused on Addison Rae, another Tiktok celebrity.
When reading your blog post the first thing that came to my mind was Crystal Abidin’s article, “Communicative <3 Intimacies: Influencers and Perceived Interconnectedness.” In this article, Abidin defines an influencer as “everyday, ordinary Internet users who accumulate a relatively large following on blogs and social media” (Abidin, 2015). Charli can definitely be considered an influencer according to Abidin as when she first started uploading content in 2019, she was like any other 15-year-old who just so happened to be a competitive dancer who also used TikTok. As you mentioned in your blog post, Charli was able to become famous overnight just for posting a short video clip of her dancing on Tiktok. As of now, Charli has a total of 149.2 million followers and 11.3 billion likes on her TikTok page. Therefore, according to Abidin’s definition of influencers, Charli D’Amelio is an everyday ordinary person who has accumulated a relatively large following on the social media platform TikTok.
Furthermore, Charli interacts with her followers in “digital and physical spaces” when she utilizes TikTok’s interactive features to like or reply to comments from fans (Abidin, 2015). This is evident throughout her TikTok posts where she can be seen engaging with her followers in the comment section. Another example of this can be shown when Charli occasionally participates in live stream videos on her social media platforms. As her fans send her comments through the live stream video, Charli is able to engage with her fans by responding to some of the comments she notices in the live stream. Charli also happens to host meet & greet events where she physically meets her passionate followers. These examples goes to show how Charli D’ Amelio is an influencer who manages to engage with her following in “digital and physical spaces” (Abidin, 2015).
I personally find Charli’s rise to fame to be a very interesting story and I appreciate you for bringing this topic to our attention.
From,
Michel Jung
Shelly, this is a great blog post! I agree with your links to the readings, especially how you link in cool-hunting. I also think about Charli D’amelio’s success being closely linked to Abidin’s idea of the influencer. She defines an influencer as “everyday, ordinary Internet users who accumulate a relatively large following on blogs and social media … and monetise their following by integrating “advertorials” into their… social media posts”(2015). This means that influencers gain fame somewhat serendipitously but subsequently use their platform to gain money by advertising products in their posts. D’amelio and her spectators often discuss how her social media virality was somewhat random, but had brand deals dropped in her lap and suddenly became a star. This is especially significant because of her co-option of different viral dances on TikTok and how she was given credit for them while the creators behind them never achieved a fraction of the fame she had -- both on the lines of followers and monetary gain through advertorials. Another mechanism behind her fame is “perceived interconnectedness.” Abidin defines this as “Parasocial relations enable the audience to cultivate an extensive knowledge of the television or radio personality, without any actual reciprocity involved” (2015). In other words, the influencer is able to fabricate a sense of closeness with their audience through the limited amount of content she shares with the world, yet the connection between the influencer and their followers is unidirectional. This is significant because even though D’amelio may post a lot of content that doesn’t require a lot of effort, she still carefully chooses what elements of her life she shares with her audience. She also doesn’t get to substantively get to know her audience. This business model allows people to feel close to influencers despite not knowing them authentically. The result of this is them buying into the products the influencer endorses and contributing to their commercial success.
ReplyDeleteOlufikemi (Kemi) Ogunyankin
RE-DO
ReplyDeleteShelly, this is a great blog post! I agree with your links to the readings, especially how you link in cool-hunting. I also think about Charli D’amelio’s success being closely linked to Abidin’s idea of the influencer. She defines an influencer as “everyday, ordinary Internet users who accumulate a relatively large following on blogs and social media … and monetise their following by integrating “advertorials” into their… social media posts”(2015). This means that influencers gain fame somewhat serendipitously but subsequently use their platform to gain money by advertising products in their posts. D’amelio and her spectators often discuss how her social media virality was somewhat random, but had brand deals dropped in her lap and suddenly became a star. This is especially significant because of her co-option of different viral dances on TikTok and how she was given credit for them while the creators behind them never achieved a fraction of the fame she had -- both on the lines of followers and monetary gain through advertorials. Another mechanism behind her fame is “perceived interconnectedness.” Abidin argues that “parasocial relations enable the audience to cultivate an extensive knowledge of the television or radio personality, without any actual reciprocity involved” (2015). In other words, the influencer is able to fabricate a sense of closeness with their audience through the limited amount of content they share with the world, yet the connection between the influencer and their followers is unidirectional. This is significant because even though D’amelio may post a lot of content that doesn’t require a lot of effort, she still carefully chooses what elements of her life she shares with her audience. She also doesn’t get to substantively get to know her audience. This business model allows people to feel close to influencers despite not knowing them authentically. The result of this is them buying into the products the influencer endorses and contributing to their commercial success.
Olufikemi (Kemi) Ogunyankin