TikTok killed celebrity

Inside the Australian TikTok awards

The world of celebrity has gotten a little bit fucky recently. Just take a look at the TikTok awards in Sydney last week. It was an enormous, expensive event attended by hundreds of the country’s biggest ‘creators’ – none of whom I’d ever heard of. By all accounts they all had a terrible night.

But before I get into the drama, I must firstly make it clear that I hate the word ‘creator’. It’s a mushy, boneless term which slimed its way into common usage sometime in the last decade.

‘Creator’ once conjured thoughts of artisans or Gods. Though they might tell you otherwise, the people on TikTok are neither. Really, they are more like modern-day Dickensian factory workers, forced to make staggering amounts of inconsequential videos to appease an unfeeling company’s algorithm.

But while they might be peons, TikTok still needs them to function.

To get steam trains moving, men had to shovel coal into furnaces. For TikTok to sell ads, millions of ‘creators’ must turn their lives into short-form videos.

So how to keep these worker bees happy? In some countries, TikTok will pay approved people a rate, based on the number of views their videos receive. It’s shockingly low. Around two cents for every thousand views. But if your audience is big enough, this can still be lucrative. In Australia, however, there is no such deal. But the biggest names on the platform do get an exclusive invitation to an annual awards ceremony.

This used to be an event you’d want an invite to.

TikTok would book a nice venue, and pay for food and booze. There were photographers, red carpets, and all these online celebrities would get to feel, for one night, that their fame was tangible.

But things didn’t play out that way this year. I know about it because many of the attendees have taken to the platform that so disappointed them, to complain about their treatment.

TikTok award winners

According to the videos I’ve watched, there were two tiers of attendees: those who were nominated for an award, and those who weren’t. People in the former group seemed to largely have a good time. They walked down the red carpet, had their photos taken, and got interviewed.

No such luck with the second group.

These sorry people lined up for the red carpet, but weren’t allowed on it. No one wanted their photos. No one wanted their interviews. But worst of all? The food and drinks weren’t free.

My God, if ever there was a group to not stiff on freebies, it’s the influencer crowd. To amass a following on social media, is to be sent more food, clothes, and event invites than a sensible person could ever need. People with more than 100,000 followers might not be rich in money, but they will certainly be rich in free shit. To not provide a glass of carbonated wine or two really is unforgivable cheapskatery.

But really, it wasn’t just the expense of buying their own drinks that caused so much angst. On the one night where the TikTok creator’s celebrity was supposed to feel legitimate, they were treated like — shock horror — normal people.

But they all are normal people.

So is the nature of celebrity these days, that anyone is one viral moment away from having thousands, even millions, of followers.. Andy Warhol, of course, predicted this would happen. “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes,” he said.

Has the democratising of fame been a good thing? Honestly, I’m not sure. It’s not like the most deserving people always ended up in the spotlight. Fame has always been a random, fickle beast. But even by modern-day standards, where Kim Kardashian is one of the best-known people on the planet, the calibre of TikTok ‘celebrity’ seems grim.

Take the winner of the “High-Quality Content Creator of the Year” award. This went to Melbourne man Anthony Randello-Jahn, the owner of ‘thedonutdaddy’, one of the most batshit social accounts I’ve ever encountered.

He is, in short, a chef who makes overly complicated food in the most uncomfortably, unappetisingly horny way possible.

In one short video, he fingerbangs a grapefruit for an extended period of time, dry humps his blender, and then makes a complicated cake. He does not provide a recipe, or coherent steps to follow. It was just a video of a man who enjoys cooking way too much.

Never eat at this man's house.

His whole feed is filled with the same concept, over and over again. I suppose I should be impressed with the endlessly creative ways he simulates sex with pantry items. But is this really what amounts to high quality? A contextless montage of shots without a story? The same banal idea repeated endlessly?

Fame is deserved, I think, only when it is an unintended consequence of worthy output. But TikTok and its ilk doesn’t reward what is good. It mostly favours that which is visually arresting. When views and audiences are the goal in and of itself, it leads to hollow art and hollow people.

No wonder ‘creators’ were upset at the TikTok awards. It was an event that confirmed what I’m sure many were afraid to be true: online followers don’t translate to real-world substance.