Alex Hoffman doesn’t consider herself TikTok famous. Her nearly 17,000 followers might say otherwise.

The SESP second-year’s account (@definitelynotalexxx) gained traction on March 28, when she parodied a trend of lightweight girls crashing onto their beds when their boyfriends come home. To the sound of Trey Songz’ “Na Na,” Hoffman dives back first into a pile of pillows as she imitates the impact of an “8’9” 500 pound boyfriend [coming] home from lifting.” Soon enough, her video garnered 1.2 million views. But, as she says, “anybody can become TikTok famous.”

As of May 21, TikTok stands just below Zoom on Apple’s top apps chart, taking off because of users like Hoffman, who says her quarantine-induced boredom led her to create streams of comedic content. To keep herself entertained, Hoffman pokes fun at popular sounds and trends with about 10 posts a day, which have accumulated 1,000 to 2.5 million views.

Because the Beijing-based app tailors each feed to its users’ interests and habits, anybody’s public video can end up on another’s feed, regardless of whether the users follow each other. This propels the double-edged sword of custom content, showing users videos that will interest them while, for the most part, shutting them off from opposing perspectives. This is just one way in which TikTok is influencing the way creators interact with consumers.

While media like television and music involve agents and studios before the product ever reaches the public, TikTok has changed this traditional methodology. Weinberg PhD candidate Anna Michelson, who taught “Sociology of Popular Culture” in spring 2019, says TikTok is revamping the cultural production system, bringing the products directly to the consumer.

“Artists can completely develop something on their own and take it directly to the buyer,” Michelson says. “So really, it's the removal of the gatekeepers that's really disrupting the process and then emerging as an alternative to that traditional process.”

Communication fourth-year Leo Jared Scheck (@schxleo) has reached millions of viewers thanks to the unconventional algorithm. His most popular video highlighted a dramatic fictional experience in which he noticed a tattoo symbolic of Naziism on his date’s arm and questioned, “I’m Jewish, we’re both gay, and you’re a Nazi?” The TikTok received more than 2.5 million views. Now, he has more than 22,000 followers.

When bursts of energy and creativity hit, Scheck would post up to eight TikToks a day, though his post frequency has since diminished to 2 to 3 times a day. He’s fueled by the storytelling tactics he learned in playwriting classes at Northwestern. Scheck doesn’t think his content has gone viral in the way that some videos have in the past.

“Everyone's videos on TikTok go viral. That's kind of the whole point,” Scheck says. “I have not gone viral in the way that Rebecca Black went viral. ‘Friday’ was a viral video and everyone knew about it, as opposed to this app that's designed to make everyone's videos go viral. I've had a few videos that have gotten over a million views. I have a decent number of followers, and I'm just kind of doing my thing.”

TikTok’s ability to make any user go “viral” is attributed to its algorithm, according to Communications PhD candidate Renwen (Alice) Zhang, who taught “Social Media and Online Social Interactions” in fall 2019. Zhang sees TikTok as a game-changing, “fundamentally different” entity in the context of the greater social media ecosystem.

"Now, I think very carefully about what I post because I know that a lot of people could see it. I have the potential to make something almost viral, so I want it to be good. "

- Talia Schulhof, Medill first-year

“When you open the app, the first thing you see isn't the feed of a friend, but is a page [designed] for you. It's an algorithmic feed based on the videos you've interacted with or even just watched,” Zhang said. “So it's not people you know or things you've explicitly told it you want to see. It’s full of things that you have demonstrated you want to watch through your behavior and watching history.”

While apps like Facebook and Instagram are based on friendships and followings, TikTok thrives on content. Zhang sees TikTok as a way that adolescents are killing time and avoiding “really deep social interactions.”

Still, the app helps facilitate some social interaction. Scheck engages with followers in his messages, establishing a bond with other users who have similar followings and interests.

“There's a little bit of a camaraderie [between] relatively smaller creators,” Scheck says. “It's kind of like a we're-all-in-this-together mentality and we do what we can to support each other.”

Medill first-year Talia Schulhof (@taliasc) even fostered a virtual Northwestern community within the app. As high school seniors posted their college acceptances and decisions on TikTok, Schulhof reached out to incoming Northwestern students, following some Wildcats in the class of 2024.

While Schulhof boarded the TikTok train long before the quarantine (her first post dates back to June 2019), there’s one fact Scheck and Hoffman agree on: they wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t for COVID-19.

Scheck and Hoffman both doubted TikTok at first, associating it with an audience much younger than them. After a brief time in quarantine, though, both gave in to downloading TikTok. Scheck finally surrendered to his younger brothers’ obsession with the app.

“I don't know if I'm a millennial, or whether I'm considered the upper end of Gen Z, but I was like, ‘I’m never downloading this.’ This is crazy,” Scheck says. “And then after a couple of weeks in quarantine, I was just bored. I was like, I'm gonna download this because this is where this is the forefront of the internet now and I don't want to be left out.”

Despite her early arrival to the app, Schulhof didn’t debut her first big-time video until this March in the stacks of Deering Library, relating the possibility of a virtual quarter to the early-2000s Education Connection television ads. Around dining halls and in classes, students approached Schulhof to tell her they saw her video in their group chats. Users she had never met commented that their teachers posted her video to their Canvas pages. When that video reached over 800,000 views, Schulhof’s perspective on the app shifted.

“Before, I was just making them as a joke. I really wouldn't care what I looked like,” Schulhof says. “Now, I think very carefully about what I post because I know that a lot of people could see it. I have the potential to make something almost viral, so I want it to be good.”

Although she wanted her reach to extend beyond her close circles, Schulhof was concerned what that would mean for her privacy. Until late April, Schulhof disguised herself as @clubpenguin33, initially only posting videos of her dogs and avoiding revealing her face. Now, she’s given up her anonymity, approaching TikTok with full trust.

Hoffman encountered her own version of privacy issues when her audience went from laughing with her to laughing at her. While the majority of her posts get positive attention and feedback, she’s also been bullied for her appearance in the comment section and roped into a “rivalry” against another user.

“They were just ripping me apart, from my voice to my face, and it was horrible,” Hoffman says. “I started clicking on the accounts that were saying some of these comments, and they were like 12-year-old girls.”

Aside from privacy concerns and its tendency to discourage social interactions, Zhang says a primary ramification of the content-centric feed is the “filter bubble” it propels. The app picks up on viewing history and develops a complex model to infer future viewing habits. It also boosts impressions on videos with algorithm-detected popularity potential.

“One potential downside of [TikTok] is that people are more and more narrow-minded by only seeing the things that entertain or interest them, rather than exploring other things that they might not have thought about,” Zhang said.

Scheck recognizes this filter bubble as it relates to the identities he holds. He gears his content toward similar users to bolster a consistent brand, playing largely on his identities and depending on the algorithm to reach viewers with similar attributes.

“TikTok knows exactly who I am. They know that I'm into theatre, they know that I'm gay, they know that I'm Jewish. It's probably really, really awful for privacy. I can't imagine what they're doing with this data,” Scheck says. “At the end of the day, I don't know that it's any worse than any of the other social media that I already use. So it's just a choice I have decided to live with.”