TikTok Attack Videos go Live with Anti Advertising Advertising Club
In 2020 we live in a world where Facebook and Twitter have gone full on censorship, where you cannot debate ideas or opinions like the town-square model of the internet. Even Mark Zuckerberg it seems changes his mind in 2020.
Young people are also unhappy with how companies deal with equality and the suppression of free opinions. Witness Coinbase and their terrible handling of Black Lives matter. It’s embarrassing to see how Silicon Valley is behaving. Nobody wants a world where Libra stablecoins try to hack the global consumer, or Instagram has any real social commerce future.
But there are always weird new companies that highlight not just the deep fake reality of how social media has been weaponized, but a more anonymous approach go going viral.
Are you Ready to be an Anti-Influencer?
This is not a drill, witness MSCHF.
MSCHF is going to pay people to hate on brands using viral TikToks. I think it’s actually a counter-intuitive ethical hack. A company called MSCHF has quietly been creating some of the most absurd, cynical, and viral projects and products that have spread across the internet. I think they will change how TikTok operates as an activist platform. Nobody actually knows what MSCHF actually is or really does.
Dairy company with a major in astrology? It’s pretty hilarious.
In an age of deep fakes, Silicon Valley censorship, what could possibly be next?
MSCHF is paying TikTok users up to thousands of dollars for viral “takedowns” of Amazon, Tesla, TikTok itself, Facebook, the NFL, Palantir and other companies. Viral marketing to sell out, why not? It’s for a good cause.
It asks users to post a video “attacking” the brands for their unethical and semi-illegal practices. For instance how Palantir abuses its relationship with the ICE (Immigration and Customers Enforcement) or TikTok and their own peculiar brand of censorship (Taiwan and Hong Kong issues for example).
GenZ likes to shake up the internet, and the dry ad-driven internet white male privileged Millennials created is going to be disrupted. The Matrix is going to turn against itself. So what is MSCHF?
“A brand of what? I don’t know. Being a company kills the magic,” Gabriel Whaley recently told Business Insider. “We’re trying to do stuff that the world can’t even define.”
The Age of Viral Videos used for Activism
MSCHF is basically getting a reputation for being a cynical, viral product driven company that meshes with GenZ values of activism online. They will pay TikTok creators up to $20,000. They introduce their own customer sounds as well into the creative mix. 5,000 views gets you about $10 in their rewards scheme. Ironically this company could very well be Chinese funded in the end.
TikTok itself censors videos of minorities, like people who are overweight, ugly, disabled or otherwise non-desirable content from the point of view of the Chinese Community Party. This is basically a call to action for a new group called the Anti Advertising Advertising Club. Other companies on the target list include Purdue Pharma, Comcast and Fashion Nova.
If any video hits the stated count thresholds, users can send the TikTok link to MSCHF which once verified delivers a payout via PayPal. Young people don’t read blogs or listen to podcasts that much, but they do appreciate a good meme, cynical video or TikTok story. MSCHF is happy to help GenZ sell out for a good cause.
Meanwhile Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have greatly accelerated censorship of their own variety in 2020, arguably over-reaching their legal grounds to do so. How are young people going to fight back in a world with less free speech, privacy or transparency than in recent memory? Through a viral story it would seem.
Are you ready to become an anti-influencer? Instead of posting lame stuff on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram, it’s time to embrace the new wave. Standing up to companies who have immoral and dangerous practices isn’t a bad thing. I would know.
Facebook could always squash a viral app or buy them out, but what do they do this time? TikTok is in legal limbo and is now the main attention economy spectrum for global youth. Silicon Valley is in trouble, as China is innovating at a faster pace, and now they are censoring our world? It’s not okay, no matter how liberal you are. Freedom of speech has always been one of our most basic principles of social contracts.
We are today living in a world where Silicon Valley is an arbiter of truth. That’s not an internet young people likely want to be a part of.
China weaponizes public opinion online with an army of fake moderators and fake accounts to hurt businesses that it deems enemies of the State.
Now it seems TikTok has joined the army. What’s left to happen in 2020? Those deep fakes are just waiting for a good occasion.
Will you join the anti-advertising advertising club? This article has elements of parody and satire. Who knew TikTok content could become so political? If I didn’t know better I’d say GenZ is about to be weaponized.
What’s a creator to do in a pandemic? Quite Instagram and YouTube and join TikTok or Spotify podcasting, it would seem. In the future, internet collectives will wield more power and companies won’t be free to stomp on others. But that’s still along ways off.