Sympathy Sells

 The rise of TikTok in the social media world was hard and fast, starting off as a silly lip syncing app for kids and now home to a variety of communities and niches with content on everything from politics, recipes, dances, and anime (although now not always as kid-friendly). TikTok’s relatively new rise has brought along questionable morals for large content creators, as there are not really any clearrules on disclosing paid sponsorships and advertisements.

With this unethical advertising coming from large corporations as well as the pandemic who shall not be named, many people across the globe have lost or are struggling to maintain a liveable income. With TikToks algorithm and format it is almost too easy to spread content, with the use of a popular sound, trending and relevant hashtags, and an alright looking video people have been able to cost effectively advertise their small business.

Yet trends now a days die faster than your houseplant, and the nineteen-year-old making resin combs in her bedroom who sold out on her first day on Etsy is now has zero orders, so what does she do? Guilt trip. Hundreds of thousands of “small businesses” posting videos of them filling resin moulds with glitter, burning messages into planks of would, making what was once trendy jewellery, with voiceovers saying how hard they work. How much money they’ve spent. How you alone are the reason they cannot afford rent and utilities because you refuse to buy from small businesses. And it was working. People liking, commenting, and sharing these videos because they feel bad and personally responsible that some random person in a country they’ve never been to bought too many bubble mailers. Following their account to see if they will actually make a product you like enough to spend money on.

These “please feel bad for me” accounts became so popular that parody pages have been made, mocking the voiceover tactics reminding people to “always support small business”. Pages such as @customwoodburning gained so much popularity that they themselves have been able to create their own small business of badly done wood burnt pieces.

As ridiculous and manipulative this technique is, TikTok’s algorithm has made it so that it works, putting these videos on the for you page of someone who will go out and buy your awful resin pyramid.