Tag: Famuan

With a ban of the popular social media app TikTok looming large over the United States, many users and content creators are bracing for the inevitable.

Last year President Joe Biden, wary of TikTok’s Chinese owner, signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. The app is scheduled to be removed from app stores and shut down on January 19, one day before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

 TikTok rose in popularity in the United States  during COVID-19 when nobody could leave home. Millions turned to TikTok for entertainment, and the app  was there to deliver. According to Independent.co.uk, it is estimated that 170 million Americans use the app each month. 

Starting Sunday, TikTok will significantly lose users to top content creators who set trends that make the app so popular. 

Florida A&M University’s student-led radio station, 90.5 The Flava Station, hosted a funeral for the app at 2 p.m. Thursday. It is essential to note that the funeral was a parody and that nobody passed away. 

The idea for the funereal was spearheaded by the station’s promotions manager, Jayla Royal, a fourth-year broadcast journalism major. She said that she was inspired to hold this event. 

“As the promotions manager of 90.,5 it is my job to develop creative and innovative ways to promote the station,” Royal said. 

90.5’s funeral event was made into a TikTok video that will circulate on the app and a few other social media apps such as Instagram and X. The video is meant to generate one last laugh and inspire a few of your favorite dances. 

In the video, members of the 90.5 team mixed some of the sounds and trends into a 90’s R&B classic, “Hard to Say Goodbye” by Boyz II Men. For example, some trending sounds mixed into the song were “My Shayla,” #real friendship, and Sahbabii’s wall dance, just to name a few. 

Royal said this will make the radio station stand out  among those creating tributes to the popular app. “The funeral will be more impactful as opposed to just making a RIP TikTok post; anybody can do that,” she said. 

Students attending the parody TikTok funeral dressed in all black, and some even had flowers. The service began with two casket bearers marching with a small box containing a picture of the TikTok logo with the radio station members following close behind, just as you would at a traditional funeral.  Once the “casket” was placed down, station members would go up one by one and either say their favorite TikTok phrase or do their favorite TikTok dance in a grieving fashion to commensurate the app’s death. 

With its time dwindling, TikTok has given people of all ages and races a place to learn, laugh, shop and dance. 

With the app’s banishment, many will be left wondering how they will move forward, especially Gen Z, because many in that generation use TikTok as a search engine similar to Google. For example, they use TikTok to look up simple things such as good places to eat. 

Trinity Dantzler attended Thursday’s event, and said she is going to miss TikTok.

“TikTok is special — you can learn on TikTok, you can teach someone on TikTok, you can dance on TikTok. TikTok is one of those apps that encompasses everything,” she said. Hopefully, a new app will emerge to replace TikTok.