She spent her inheritance sending money to TikTok Livestreamers. What started as a game turned into addiction.::Cindi White spent more than $25,000 on TikTok Influencers. TikTok’s Live Matches have a dark side.
The matches imitate a video game. Two TikTokers stream side-by-side, divided into “red” and “blue” teams. As a timer counts down from five minutes, they go to wild and kooky lengths to get their fans to send them these gifts.
The creativity to create things like these battles is interesting
We really are fleshy machines that just need our buttons pushed the right way to get us to obsess over almost anything
It really is interesting and of course kind of sad. She was retired, living alone, a world traveler until the pandemic hit but plunged into isolation after that. While we might think it’s silly, I can emphasize with the appeal this might have to someone like that:
Then, seconds before a match ended, she’d hit her favorite creator with a $13 disco ball or a $29 Jet Ski — if she planned it right — just enough to push them over the edge and win.
The chats would erupt into a frenzy, and the streamer and their fans would shower her with praise. “It’s like somebody on TV calling out your name, especially if there’s over a thousand people in the room,” White said. “It really does do something to you. You feel like you’re somebody.”
I remember my grandma would lock herself in a little room playing Tetris on the Nintendo for literally 8-10 hours a day. I imagine if she had lived to see tik tok, she’d be worse off then the lady in the article.
Be! Excited! Be, Be Excited!
Edit: To anyone too young to know, or simply out of the loop, this is from Requiem for a Dream. No doubt you recognize that music; the ubiquitous “oh so dramatic” music. That… Was scored for this movie. This was it’s original application. There’s a reason it’s ubiquitous today. Fuck. The gravity of this movie is bringing me to tears rn and I haven’t seen it in over a decade. If you haven’t seen it, watch it.
Hilarious. I can’t believe they actually did a Cash War. I watched a Twitch streamer joke about this a few years before Tik Tok existed
You’d get more utility from lighting 25k on fire. What the fuck.
IIRC, it takes three generations to blow though an inheritance…
Fool = Easily parted money
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It’s a lot of money don’t get me wrong but I kind of expected more. Some twitch streamers (mainly softcore porn streamers) get an absolute fuckload from some donors. Talking 50k+ from one person, they’re usually as a joke called oil princes
Hard to have sympathy for this woman, but these TikTok battles where they basically have influencers competing to see who can get their followers to donate more money to TikTok do seem pretty fucked up.
Tiktok must make a killing. I did the math and the coin packages they offer vs what streamers return rates are means they are pocketing 40 to 60% of the money.
Instead of traveling the world, that lady instead waste a ton of money on Chinese manipulated show. Unbelievable.
Being somewhat in the know, I honestly don’t think it’s a propaganda tool for the CCP in it’s current form and making that claim unsubstantiated doesn’t help with credibility. What it is though is direct access to your devices as a spy tool and a massive machine learning data source that the CCP has unfettered access to. Every phone with the app installed is now a potential sensor.
