I think one part of its success is that TikTok really hit a nerve w/ its core social appeal: miming to pop culture artifacts. For those of you who remember Yout

I think one part of its success is that TikTok really hit a nerve w/ its core social appeal: miming to pop culture artifacts. For those of you who remember Youtube back when it was just a sketchy looking website in a sea of seedy websites, the 2nd (?) video that ever went viral was this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1LZVmn3p3o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1LZVmn3p3o. In essence the same concept as TikTok. Just to take the message home, singing along is one aspect of social miming, from it there's endless variations, so endless potential to create content. And once you generalize from miming top10 songs to miming challenges created by other people, you arrive at the heart of TikTok's social mechanics: it's not just creating videos or remixing songs, it's creating culture, conforming to it, and bending it towards yourself.