will i ever monetize
?
will i ever monetize ?
Meme-ified Satire?
Satire is a comedic tool that is used to exaggerate something; often an exaggeration of a phenomena that is alarmingly ridiculous yet it is reality. It can also be referred to as “parody” which may be more familiar to use.
I began sporadically posting short video essays on TikTok two years ago. Many of my videos were moderated from the feed and received low viewership. I believe that this is due to a combination of me not perfecting my niche of content yet, the fact that I talk about topics that critique the platform’s culture while using words such as “harmful,” and “toxic” within my content which the platform does not favor. And third, TikTok's moderation policies are fickle and ever-changing.
My new strategy was to gain visibility and grow a broader audience on the platform and I noticed what users seemed to value in these serious times of political, social, and environmental unrest: Entertainment and humor. Users, me included, seek a temporary escape through online entertainment.
A form of satire that has been useful over the years is news channel satire as seen on mainstream television and scripted comedy such as Saturday Night Live. So I created a news segment on my channel and meme-ified it with an understanding of what TikTok audiences find humorous. Lots of random sounds to foster engagement to the TikTok attention span, the use of captioning, avoiding the use of on-platform music (especially after the UMG debacle this year), and leaning on something I value personally – humor.
SNL ‘Weekend Update’
With Michael Che and Colin Jost (2018)
How I Gained Almost Half a Million Views (440K as of December 2024)
I am admittedly and shamelessly chronically online on TikTok; it is my platform of choice. I notice and critique phenomena and trends on the app constantly.
A trend that was circulating in September 2024, when I created my most-viewed video, was the circulation of porn-related audios that were put onto the platform by a user on TikTok named @yeskingproductions. I later found out through various forum posts on sites like Reddit that the audios were directly from a popular sex worker named LoveandLightTV. Particularly I found the origins through r/loveandlighttv, where users create sometimes problematic mashups of the audio and video content related to the porn creator.
The TikTok user @yeskingproductions posts gaming clips with unrelated gay pornography sounds as the audio and has somehow managed to continuously evade TikTok's moderation and censorship process. I reached out to the user for comment and we direct messaged (DM'd) a little but no further response was made by the user to confirm my request for an interview. The audios continue to circulate the platform today.
TikTok DM between (@yeskingproductions) and me.
Partial DM: Only including my introductory message to honor privacy.
My task was to talk about this trend while, much like @yeskingproductions, evade moderation. So I made a satirical video as a newscaster for entertainment but the genuine conversation I wanted to have was about platform moderation. I still seek to know how TikTok upholds certain moderation practices and how the platform’s policy is geared toward “kid safety” but would allow these audios to be circulated on-platform without a warning label at minimum and a removal at maximum.
My approach to satirical content on TikTok is to ‘say everything by saying nothing,’ so that I can have my videos flow into the feed. This is the current state of TikTok moderation: Sometimes controversial content is allowed, other times not. It is difficult to assess even as a content creator and researcher of social media platforms.
Video Analytics
Watch the full video here.
This video has gained me over 600 new followers, amplified my visibility on-platform, and has given me at least one segmented niche that I may continue in the future: News casting satire of trending topics.
I seek to provide content that is thought-provoking and informative but delivered in an entertaining and sometimes humorous manner.
-jamie