Best Holiday TikToks of 2019
Image courtesy of the New York Times
It’s the end of 2019. Time for the “Best Ads of the Year” “Best Ads of the Holiday Season” “Best Ads of the Decade” sorts of posts. Hell, maybe you’re not working, but you’re on your phone cuz you’ve run out of stuff to say to your in-laws.
But instead of the best commercials or videos, Division of Labor wants to focus on the best TikToks of the season. This holiday has produced a batch of some pretty funny videos on the hottest platform of the year. (Forget the fact that it all might be a Chinese plot to spy on America.) People are making a lot of TikToks and spending hours and hours watching them. So, if you haven’t heard of them, or don’t quite get what they are, allow us to introduce you to a massive platform that Millennials and Gen Y are spending reams of time on. And, well, this means you should be there too.
We’ll start by pointing out that there were a number of noteworthy traditional holiday commercials this year like Goodby’s Comcast ET spot and Peloton’s shit show of a commercial and the Ryan Reynolds genius Aviation gin ad that followed. But, let’s be honest, they’ve been talked about to death and, well, Division of Labor has nothing to add on the topic. Fortunately, we have plenty to say on the top holiday TikToks of the season. So, we’ll stop the blathering and get right to it.
MARIAH CAREY’S KEYBOARD PLAYER
This gem is set to Mariah Carey’s Christmas classic, “All I want for Christmas is You,” which plays as we watch the POV of someone frantically running toward a random suburban house. The shaky footage feels frenetic as the camera reaches the front stoop, pushes open the door, looks around and sees a couple of people holding instruments. The camera runs toward an empty keyboard and gets there just in time to play the piano solo of the song.
A huge number of TikToks are set to music and people create all manner of bits, sometimes just lip syncing and other times having fun with a songs lyrics, and in this case, just timing it perfectly to nail the joke. This TikTok had close to 500,000 likes at this posting.
This TikTok is set to the same Mariah Carey song as above, but it works with the lyric: “I don’t want a lot for Christmas.” The woman in the video expresses her annoyance after being gifted a parking lot for Christmas even though she specifically said she did not want a “lot for Christmas.”
This is a fairly common TikTok construct but here it’s just so dopey you can’t help but laugh. This TikTok has close to 600k likes as of this posting.
Rapper Post Malone has frequently been regarded as a pop cultural symbol as well as the subject of many internet memes. In this Tiktok, someone shows off their new car interior and then reveals the custom Post Malone door light with the rapper’s face on it.
Taking pieces of internet meme culture and playing off of them in new ways is the point of Tiktok for a lot of people. So your very own Post Malone custom door light is spot on. This TikTok has close to 400k likes as of this posting.
This TikTok started gaining momentum during the holiday season. It uses a popular TikTok format of lip syncing to the Google translate voice that’s reading something the creator wrote. The neutrality and lack of expression of the computer voice set against some deeply personal shit has made for great Tiktoks. And this one is no different with 450k likes as of posting.
The original audio for this Tiktok comes from a 2013 video taken outside Kanye West’s house early in the morning. In the original clip, the person filming says “good morning Kanye” to which in typical Kanye fashion, he politely replies with “shut the fuck up”. This audio was recently recovered and dubbed over many TikToks such as this one, which depicts the struggle of sleeping over at a friends house when they don’t give you a blanket or pillows. The TikTok has close to 2.6 million likes as of posting.
We all know of or have at least heard of, the “Ok Boomer” meme. If you haven’t, this trend, at its core, is meant to make fun of or belittle the attitudes of the baby boomer generation. Naturally, this trend has taken off on Tiktok as well, and these commonly backed by the song written by Peter Kuli and Jedwill. This TikTok, and others, take common phrases, complaints, or traits of the baby boomer generation and mock them with dry sarcastic undertones.
Another important format in the TikTok platform is the point of view or POV video. The idea here is that videos can be filmed from a certain person or even objects point of view. If this sounds broad and confusing that’s because it is, but it also leaves a lot of room for creativity.
This particular video plays off of a recent trend-making fun of the popular retailer Brandy Melville, a store characterized by rude employees and clothes that only fit pre-pubescent teenage girls. If you’ve never shopped there, watch this video and it will feel like you have.
This TikTok was made popular, like many other videos on the app, by its sound, The original audio was uploaded by one user and has since been dubbed over many times making jokes about things that upper-middle-class people may classify as “ghetto”.
Political correctness is also kinda tossed out the window on TikTok as inside jokes on top of inside jokes blur the line of what’s appropriate and not. 277k likes at posting.
This TikTok does not rely on sound from within the app. Instead this popular format for creating content has the video creator stand behind an open computer and read through a popular scene or monologue from television or a movie, all from memory. Not only is the memorization aspect impressive, but so is the way he is able to capture multiple characters at once.
To see more, jump on TikTok and just start watching. We’ll do more of these “best of” updates every month or two. This post was written by Division of Labor’s Meme Queen Ariel Taylor. She knows her TikToks. Thanks, Ariel.
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