The war for the bottom of the pyramid is afoot and the reason is a 20-year-old YouTuber.
The battlefront opened recently when an Indian YouTuber Elvish Yadav uploaded his roast video of TikTok: TikTok vs Youtube: The Endgame. The video soon became immensely popular with views pouring in from everywhere. In his video he questioned the intelligence of TikTokers and compared them to ragpickers.
This take by Elvish did not go unnoticed by famous TikTokers as well and they decided to respond. Two major responses were from Revolver Rani (@revolverranii) and Amir Siddiqui (@teamnawab).
Amir Siddiqui posted a video on Instagram calling out YouTubers for plagiarizing TikTok content and losing out on brand endorsements. Amir’s response by was responded to by popular roaster, Ajey Nagar, known as CarryMinati. He lashed out on Amir Siddiqui’s response on YouTube and the video gained a lot of hype, reaching almost 78 million views. However, his video was taken down by YouTube because it violated YouTube’s terms of service.
After his video was deleted, his fans started trends like #RoastNahiFryKarunga (I shall fry, not roast you) and #BanTitTok on Twitter. Other trends like #BanTitTokInIndia and #TikTokExposed were also trending on Twitter. India is also one of the largest hubs of TikTok users.
Another popular trend was #BringBackCarryMinatiVideo. Ajey Nagar also thanked his supporters on Instagram for their continuous support.
The battle here is not for more followers, it is more of a class war. Since, majority of the users for both platforms come from vastly different backgrounds, it is also to decide who owns the throne to the online video world.
In just one week, the rating of TikTok has dropped from 4.6 to 2 stars on the Google Play Store. Twitter also saw an exponential increase in the number of memes regarding Amir Siddiqui and TikTok.
It was high time for TikTok critics and anti-China segments to jump on the bandwagon as well. They are demanding to ban the Chinese app altogether, accusing its users of promoting violence, hate, and acid attacks.
We have seen a lot of trends demanding to block the ByteDance-owned platform, but this time it is also about the content creators on TikTok. A lot of these creators come from smaller towns in India.
Right-wing activists haven’t spared TikTok any slack. According to them the platform is responsible for violence, Islamic conversion, and vulgarity in these towns.
As of now, TikTok has more than 200 million users in India and is one of the most popular social media platforms in the company. The global picture isn’t much different. According to an estimate, the app has been downloaded more than 2 billion times and is expanding everyday.
The battle between TikTok and Youtube is not a very recent one; however, it has gained some strong wind recently. It is to see who gets the best of the other.