A while ago we were driving over a long bridge in Bangkok.
As we neared the middle, a row of digital emoji faces appeared. Most had a grumpy face on, which indicated the car driving in its lane was going too fast.
Realising that if I went below 60kph I’d get a smiley, I slowed and was duly rewarded. My children cheered as the face appeared, and my wife happened to be there recording the moment.
It seemed a cute moment, so I added it to my modest TikTok channel, where videos rarely hover above 100 views.
Within a week, this video had hit 100,000 views. Each time I checked (which admittedly wasn’t that often), another 10,000 had seen it. Before long, it hit a million. Then within a week it was at 2 million.
This was very odd. I’m used to publishing things that get read but usually there’s a good reason for it. Why would TikTok be pushing a silly video about emojis?
After two agencies got in touch asking to try and sell on the video, I was really curious. Cute, it seems, is a winner. But cute and controversial? That, it seems, is the way to go.
You may well ask what’s contentious about driving over a bridge. Well, some viewers had plenty to say about it.
‘You want a surveillance state with social scores? Do you also want full media censorship so we can make sure people aren’t consuming media that would make them want to speed?’
‘They should also monitor our phones.’
Then someone questioned why the speed limit was so slow.
‘It’s a bridge. At night.’
‘OK, 1. What does that have to do with the speed limit? The speed limit doesn’t change based on the time of day. 2. What does the bridge falling apart have to do with ANYTHING? If the bridge falls apart, it doesn’t matter if you were going 20 or 220.’
‘It’s a bridge, where winds can change and the weather accounts for more.’
Then there were some images of cats appearing to clap. You get the picture.
So it seems the best way to go viral is to do something cute or do something controversial; there are plenty of other videos that are deliberately misleading largely to garner more comments. All of which makes me wonder about the content being created – is it really better to make mistakes or even lie just to get more hits? I’m not sure about that, but it’s definitely more lucrative. And that’s the rub.
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