”Who TF Did I Marry?”: How This TikTok Series Is Curing Attention Spans
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Strapped in her car seat, slowly cruising through the low-lit roads of Atlanta, ReesaTeesa begins sharing her saga that would soon have the internet enraptured. Her relationship with her now ex-husband, whom she often refers to as the “United Nations of Red Flags,” proved a compelling story for TikTok users. So compelling that it was split into 50+ parts, shared every day for four days starting the 15th of Feb.
@reesamteesa Who TF Did I Marry- Part One #pathologicalliar #reesateesa #fypシ #fyp ♬ original sound – ReesaTeesa
Each part is long, around ten minutes in length (which happens to be TikTok’s maximum video length), but the length of the series hasn’t dissuaded viewers from watching. Within the first week of the series hitting TikTok, it has accrued tens of millions of views and over 19.6M likes.
This is the first we have seen the app used in such a way. Presented as a true crime, Tinder Swindler-esque exposé told candidly in a marathon that will take you just shy of eight hours to sit through. With TikTok creators traditionally favouring shorter-length videos and the app only opening up longer-form video content in February 2022, this style of content could be something we see more frequently in the future.
But what does this say about our social media behaviours? Is Gen Z not the focusless teens we once thought they were? It seems to be a unique phenomenon to go viral, so let’s take a look at why and how this story has got the internet in an inexorable chokehold.
TIKTOK’S UI HELPS US LOSE A SENSE OF TIME
TikTok’s initial philosophy focused on engaging users with short video content. But since its popularity boom, the app allowed users to upload increasingly longer and longer videos. From three minutes towards the end of 2020 to now up to ten minutes in February 2022.
But if our attention spans are seemingly getting shorter, why are videos getting longer? Perhaps TikTok’s UI is to blame.
TikTok presents its UI like a casino. Bright lights and buttons and no indication of video length (unless you actively press down on the slider). The ease of scrolling to the next video is TikTok’s triumph, initiating the so-called doomscroll effect. This is not too dissimilar to the spinning reels on a slot machine.
When ‘Who TF Did I Marry?’ first gained popularity a few days ago, you can see how a user might have gotten lost in the story without realising they had gotten hooked. And then, much like a session at the pokies, began scrolling to the next part and the next.
But is it more than that? TikTok’s algorithm could also be to blame, creating an echo chamber-like effect for the user.
TIKTOK’S ECHO CHAMBER THAT YOU CAN’T ESCAPE
It seems that only just moments ago, TikTok couldn’t escape the feud between Sopha Dopha and Shelby Sherritt and the $125 mug gate, and now the app can’t stop talking about ReesaTeesa.
If you’ve seen one of ReesaTeesa’s many parts show up on your FYP, you would notice that every subsequent video or so will be another video making reference to this saga. Whether it’s other users’ commentary on the situation, people creating memes likening the series to a Netflix docuseries or succinct summaries for the time-poor, it is hard to escape the phenomenon. In fact, these reactionary videos themselves have been garnering significant numbers.
@kamsi_27 no bc netflix could never 😩 #whotfdidimarry #reesateesa #fyp ♬ original sound – rosie posie 🥀
This echo chamber effect creates FOMO for the user. If everyone can’t stop talking about it, you should jump in and see for yourself, right?
Maybe there’s something more holistic than TikTok’s algorithm and design that helps propel this novel phenomenon to virality.
Maybe it’s this…
ARE WE NOSTALGIC FOR STORYTIMES?
If you were a 2000s baby, you would probably remember a YouTube trend that surfaced where popular creators on the platform would deviate from their usual content to share storytimes of certain events of interest that happened to them. Whether it be Trisha Paytas’ ‘I Had Sex With An Entire Baseball Team’, or Tana Mongeau’s ‘My Tinder Date Tried To F*ck My Bestfriend In Front Of Me’, every teenager across the world was firing up the popcorn for the latest tea.
This trend has fizzled nowadays and it seems that YouTube content seems to be inundated with lengthy video essays instead.
Even though this trend surfaced about eight years ago, could it be possible that we are already getting nostalgic for this kind of content? Is it too soon to see this trend reemerge on another app?
TRUE CRIME IS EVERYWHERE
Similar to storytimes, the True Crime genre keeps viewers and listeners hooked via stories that seem too bizarre to be true. Gaining popularity first as a podcast genre (think Sarah Koenig’s Serial) and then over to docuseries content thanks to Netflix, retellings of popular true crime cases are seemingly here to stay within the collective conscience.
What ‘Who TF Did I Marry?’ succeeds in is maintaining enough intrigue to keep the internet hooked, keeping her ex-husband’s identity completely anonymous. Selling the story with detailed storytelling, a sense of darkness and an intimate candid setting, as if she were telling the story to us personally.
This achieves a familiarity with the audience, ultimately inviting us to warm our hands by the fire as Reesa tells us her scary campfire story.
CURING ATTENTION SPANS IS A MARATHON, NOT A SPRINT
Overall, it can be seen why this series has garnered viral popularity, regardless of its marathon size. For various reasons, we can see how ReesaTeesa has hit the jackpot with her video series. Although I must admit, it truly is a MARATHON to sit through—and one I did for the purposes of this blog. Will you take the plunge?
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