Reporters attempt to go viral on TikTok

Many popular Instagram celebrities, such as  Jacob Sartorius, Loren Gray or Danielle Cohn, started out on the app TikTok. Originally called Musical.ly, the app was primarily a platform for users to share short videos of themselves lip-synching along to popular songs or scenes from films. However, after relaunching as TikTok in 2016, the app has expanded into all that and more — it has essentially become an art form.

The main demographic of the app has shifted since rebranding as well. Musical.ly was full of young teens trying to seem provocative and gain fame through looks and choreography. TikTok, however, has a larger focus on humorous videos and editing, which is reminiscent of the now-dead platform Vine.

With the success people have been receiving on this platform, we decided to give it a shot to see if we could recreate the fame or simply gain an appreciation for the app.

(We will not be releasing Sandhya’s account username since we both have hopes of getting into college without admissions officers seeing us dancing in the bathrooms during newspaper class.)

The process of creating a TikTok begins with choosing a song or scene and filming the video. However, the best part is adding trendy filters and futuristic cinematography effects.

We were immediately overwhelmed by the infinite options we had, from the wide array of music choices to the dance moves we added. A painful choice we had to make was whether or not we should whip or dab.

Our first TikTok was made around Christmas time to Mariah Carey’s classic track, “All I Want For Christmas is You.”

We had tried to plan simple choreography beforehand to speed along the creation process, but Sofia was unable to follow simple directions or dance on beat. We ended up flossing and shooting to the jingling bells along with fellow staff members juniors Connie Liang and Anishi Patel.

After this poor attempt, we realized that if we wanted to become overnight sensations, we would have to seriously step up our game.

Our next TikTok was to the iconic song “Mooo!” by Doja Cat. We made the mistake of trying to improvise dance moves, and we ended up looking like a hot mess. We learned from this experience that we would have to put more planning into our TikToks to get the high quality we expected.

Finally, on a day where we had ample free time, we decided to go all out and create a TikTok to “ICY GRL” by Saweetie that we hoped would go viral. This was our moment. We went along with Patel and Liang to the girls’ bathroom by the Spanish wing. Unfortunately, Mr. Yeilding’s Spanish class was having their “siesta” at the same time and had to witness the entire experience.

We filmed many choreographed moves like opening the bathroom stall doors in unison and filming a faux fight scene. Since it was raining, we concluded with a scene of Sandhya washing her hands in the rain. It took us an embarrassingly long time to create this, but with all the time and effort we put into shooting the scene, it was definitely our proudest moment.

That video may have been our first and last high quality production, but most recently, we attempted the YeeHaw challenge to the song “Old Town Road.” The video captures us “transforming” into cowgirls by wearing flannels and cowboy hats.

Although we may not have gotten the celebrity status that we were hoping for, the ease of creating content makes this app very appealing, and we will be sure to keep creating TikToks in our free time. And we’ll keep telling ourselves that it only takes one viral video to become famous.