Heres why Tik Tok users cry for attention

Screen grabs from TikTok videos that show how Reptiles of Kurla transitioned into Boys who Cry Passionately on Musically India (TikToks original name was musical.ly). The admin of these pages says, the creators do "anything they can to get some attention"

To anyone whose head is screwed on right, TikTok is a head-scratcher. It-s tough to explain its purpose or popularity 500 million-plus downloads. A helpful page on Google annotates, "It-s an outlet to express yourself through singing, dancing, comedy and lip-syncing." It sounds innocuous, even fun, but in the hands of Indian users, it-s turned into a stream of I-can-t-believe-what-I-am-seeing. Jon, name changed on request, says, "My first reaction was to laugh at it. Then I thought, why can-t I funnel these videos onto a Facebook page with apt captions?"

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A 24-year-old who sounds wise beyond his years, Jon works in the music industry, and unlike most people from his generation, isn-t taken in by TikTok. In fact, he tells us, "When you write this [article], please mention that I used the word -talentless- [to refer to TikTok users] at least 50 times." On Facebook last year, he started two meme pages on TikTok videos, because one isn-t enough. "I saw some TikTok videos, which were really, really cringe. It seemed like the kind of stuff that would lower your IQ. I just didn-t know that this stuff existed in such a great quantity. Because we live in cities and we live in a small bubble, we don-t think outside of it. But, once the Jio burst happened, and the undercurrent chunk was online, TikTok actually had huge numbers."

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The first page, name-called Reptiles of Kurla, featured pictures of people on TikTok, alongside reptiles from Planet Earth on BBC. After reaching 70K followers, it has become classier: now it-s a TikTok video tagged with a smart one-liner. On several occasions, the lines write themselves. "We-re essentially trying to trace stupidity in any form. They the users are doing anything they can to get some attention. Last week, I saw a video of a guy TikToking on some remix, and every time there was a downbeat, he would smash his head on a bulb. There was another guy, who-s eating a tube light, like a proper CFL tube light, and crying. There are guys who go to random weddings and take selfie videos, in which the bride is out of focus, and they sing some song on bewafai. The bride has no clue. She is busy smiling and having the best day of her life." But, here-s another head-scratcher: why Kurla? "Look, I-m from Delhi. I like Kurla. We have shot [music] videos there, it-s a great location, very hospitable people. I just needed the name of the area to sound funny.

I saw this guy on YouTube, who made a song, which goes like, -Kurla, Bhiwandi, Kasaiwada, Govandi.- That-s the entire song, and he-s jumping and going hard on it. I thought all my problems were solved in one place." The second page, Boys who Cry Passionately on Musically India, was launched because of the sheer number of crybabies out there. "When I was scrolling TikTok, I saw an infinite amount of Indian males just crying to songs about dhadkan and all that. I haven-t ever seen this in my life. When I saw the crying videos - when I say many, I find at least 200-300 of them every day - it was super bizarre. It-s just guys crying profusely, tearing their shirts and beating themselves up. They-ve put some red chemical in their eyes to make it look like they-re crying hard." This page has even more followers: 90K at last count. "I-m not creating something from scratch. It-s like reaction videos on YouTube. If I see a guy tearing his shirt on some Ajay Devgn song, I-ll have a reaction to it."

Jon schedules about three posts a day, with help from three friends, who have been added as administrators. Outside of this tight circle, his identity is anonymous. "Because the public space I-m in is very respected and different." Which links to why he harbours so much disdain for TikTok stars. "Since I-m a musician, I associate stardom, or any sort of fame, directly to a skill. I see brands and MCNs multi-channel networks running after them because they literally have tens of millions of followers on TikTok, and all they-re doing is mouthing some dialogues. It makes you think, -What a miserable state are we in?-" He cites an example. "There-s a song called Pyari Pyari Akhiyan-something. This guy just started bobbing his head on it, like those bobblehead dolls, and he became viral. It-s like, I say that I-m a professional bench-slapper. I can slap benches really good, and make a crisp sound out of it. Would I even dare to call that a skill? This is exactly that. It-s absolute talentless-ness, coupled with joblessness." When we try to reason out the other side of the argument, he says, "I completely understand that it-s making people happy. I really don-t think it should be shut down. But, calling them superstars and influencers of our generation, that-s [pushing it]."

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