rant · moment 15 of 31
Crowd Work Clips, TikTok's Future, and Standup Economics
from Bastard Radio | The Tim Dillon Show #372 · #372
5 min
Discussion of viral crowd-work clips, whether TikTok will be banned, the fading novelty of platforms like Vine, and how standup only makes financial sense at a certain level, reminiscing about the days of $1,500-a-weekend club gigs.
- Tim thinks standup's current popularity is a fad partly driven by pandemic pent-up demand, and he predicts TikTok will be illegal within three months.
- The absurdity of TikTok's moderation: you can post paraplegic people in front of trains, but the app only gets shut down when it goes after Israel.
- A viral TikTok video of a Black woman saying Osama bin Laden made valid points in his letter became a right-wing talking point, though it was really just one funny clip.
- Tim argues for deleting all social media, then pivots to wanting a complete reset where everyone starts at zero followers.
- His proposal: ban TikTok because it's Chinese and dangerous, though he admits his own follower count is embarrassingly low anyway.
- Defining what he's actually good at across platforms: podcasting, Instagram for the swipe-up feature, but acknowledging he's 38 and these things don't make sense to him anymore.
- Vine was an 8-second video platform with no real purpose that created brief stars, some of whom killed themselves when it shut down.
- Show business has always been brutal: 15 minutes of fame, sexual abuse from producers, the government taking 65% of earnings, foreclosure, and suicide.
- The goal used to be simple: make $1,500 a weekend on the road alone, and that was the top of the mountain.