Tiktok content, specifically in India, from the very start has been very[1] very[2] _cringy_ (weird hairstyles, weird things being said, weird ways of expressing friendship, love, etc). I don’t mean the cringe that you associate with western Tiktok content but for some reason majority of what the Indian kids were producing stood out as being beyond cringe to existing internet users (mainly Youtube / Instagram userbase). I suspect this has to do with the millions of first-time internet / smartphone users on Tiktok + the heavy influence of exaggerated emotional Bollywood drama now being done in 15 seconds on a smartphone.
Youtube on the other hand obviously had an existing audience that was used to consuming content of a certain level of quality / production. Apart from just pure cringe content, Tiktok obviously did not bother with copyright infringements much and in fact promoted the concept of people plagiarizing each other’s work. So the Youtube / IG communities started making memes and calling out the cringe and bad content of Tiktok.
At some point one of the big influencers on Tiktok (Amir Siddiqui referred to in this article) provoked one of the biggest Indian Youtuber, Carryminati who is known for roasting people. Amir made a video saying Tiktok videos require talent, hard work, and a lot more dedication than Youtube videos and basically asked Carry to roast him.
Carry then took on the challenge and released an 8-minute roast video that beautifully called out all the cringe that tiktok users make, things that Amir had done in the past, etc. That Youtube roast video set several records within hours. The roast was actually so effective, it was hilarious to browse through Tiktok for the next few days as the entire Tiktok community sort of agreed and started making fun of each other and that single video actually shook the entire Tiktok community.
About 5-6 days later, Youtube took down the video (which was now the highest liked video of India by far) without explanation probably after receiving thousands of flags from tiktok users. It’s worth mentioning that the roast included comparisons of Amir to being a eunuch multiple times among other questionable insults because of his past tiktok videos. In my opinion, the video was definitely not trying to be Politically Correct but it wasn’t bad enough to be taken down.
Once the video was taken down, the Youtube and Instagram(meme pages) community started a campaign to leave a 1-star rating for Tiktok on the playstore and basically destroyed their rating which was about 4.5 when this started.
In case you’re wondering, I am an avid HN reader, an accomplished software engineer but I do spend about 5% of my free time enjoying Indian cringe. In fact I curate a big list of my favorites and share with my friends but very few people actually enjoy the cringe.
Was it worth explaining all of this to one of the most intellectually stimulating forums on the internet? Probably not. But I had to admit to myself that I know a lot more about this story than I’m proud to admit and that it would make me happy that it gets saved in the HN archive.
A copy of the original video that was taken down by Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoZ241zUgbA
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciYohWR2Pio [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg9gjmcHgE8