On November 10th, Fran (@johnson_fran) posted a video of herself saying: "Can we stop duetting videos when we have absolutely nothing to add to them? I don't need to know what you looked like watching that TikTok." Little did she know that this would prompt a series of... well... duet videos that added absolutely nothing!

The video was not well received, with many viewers calling her a “Karen”, the Gen Z term for an entitled and obnoxious middle-aged woman who enjoys picking arguments for no good reason. One viewer commented: “She clearly doesn’t know how TikTok works and it shows… bye Karen.”

Presumably, to get on Fran’s nerves, and apart from leaving spiteful comments, viewers also began to duet her video in the exact manner that she complained about: they recorded themselves alongside her video and objectively, added no additional value. Soon enough, chains of duet videos formed and they were embraced by the TikTok community.

As this trend continued, like many other trends on the app, it evolved. Rather than simply recording themselves watching the original video, people began to “complete the picture” by stitching videos together. As shown below, in this particular chain, Fran’s entire upper body is now “in-frame” and she’s got a whole production crew by her side.

As of today, the audio from Fran’s video has been used in over 46K videos and has shown the world the immense amount of creativity and collaboration that exists on TikTok and is unfortunately absent on other platforms including Reels.

TikTok is a true community that encourages users to interact with each other through videos. Creators have the option to either duet or stitch videos, and viewers can easily jump through these duetted/stitched videos by clicking the automatically generated redirect buttons. Furthermore, videos using the same audio are neatly grouped together and organized by decreasing engagement, which allows viewers to find the video they are looking for.

On the other hand, Reels doesn’t have any of these features (yet), making it a lot more difficult for creators and viewers to interact with one another and thus build a sense of community. If it was not already clear enough that Reels simply can not compete with TikTok, and Fran’s video surely unintentionally proved it!

Thank you SO much! Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.