TikTok posts a list of videos, makers, memes, dance trends, more that shaped the fastest-growing platform in 2019, and its North America chief talks TikTok fame
This year-end list lands six months after TikTok's stars drew crowds at VidCon, when the platform was barely a year old in the US but already being flagged as the next dominant social network. Publishing an official canon of its videos, makers, memes and dance trends — alongside an interview with its North America chief on how TikTok fame works — is the company formalizing that rise into narrative.
It also inaugurates what becomes a recurring ritual: TikTok repeats the exercise for 2020's biggest trends and again in 2023, by which point the company itself concedes how siloed users' feeds are. The 2019 list is the baseline before that fragmentation becomes the story.
First-order effects
The named creators get institutional endorsement from the platform itself — a visibility boost from TikTok at the moment its US audience is scaling fastest.
Taylor Lorenz's interview gives TikTok's North America chief a channel to define 'TikTok fame' on the company's own terms just as mainstream media begins covering its stars.
Second-order effects
Rival platforms face pressure to chase the dance trends and meme formats TikTok canonizes, since the list effectively certifies which formats carry cross-platform value.
Brands and talent scouts gain an official shortlist of makers to pursue, accelerating the migration of influencer marketing budgets toward TikTok-native creators over established YouTube and Instagram stars.
Third-order effects
If the annual-list pattern holds, TikTok positions itself as the arbiter of internet culture — though the 2023 edition's admission of siloed content suggests the shared canon these lists imply may not survive the algorithm's personalization.
The broader arc visible across the related coverage — from VidCon novelty to a force reshaping Hollywood, shopping, news and music by 2024 — points to short-video platforms displacing legacy social networks as the primary engine of US pop-culture formation.
The trend: TikTok's year-end canonizations mark its evolution from upstart video app into the self-appointed index of American internet culture, a role the platform's own later admissions about feed silos complicate.
TikTok's annual review is a genuinely-pleasing antidote to the news. It's ok to bury my head in the sand and watch a bunch of largely-nonsensical memetic videos, right? RIGHT! I believe this is what the children these days call ‘self-care’: https://newsroom.tiktok.com/ ...
@ringer per @TaylorLorenz, “tiktok 100” is out today too! (congrats @ThisisLeahL!!) it's evidence of the creative spirit of the platform. as sponsored challenges play a bigger role it'll be interesting to see how that influences the app's lovable weirdness https://www.nytimes.com…
.@v_ness, “Creators are really the heart and soul of the app. We want to make sure we're supporting them.” This includes helping them find paths to monetization https://www.nytimes.com/...
Misinformation is something @v_ness said TikTok is thinking deeply about heading into 2020. “I think as a platform of scale you can't not think about these things today and there's a level of responsibility we have to take on.” https://www.nytimes.com/...
.@v_ness: TikTok has become a hotbed of talent, and there's so much discoverability on the platform that it can be used as this mechanism to discover new voices" https://www.nytimes.com/...
2019 is the year “tiktok famous” became part of the lexicon. TikTok fame isn't like YouTube fame or insta fame. It can happen swiftly and strike anyone. TikTok's head of North America talks about why these new stars are key to the platform's growth https://www.nytimes.com/...