Image via Pixabay

In a statement released on March 29, video-sharing app TikTok announced an exciting new feature it calls “Library.” Library is an in-app creation tool that will integrate material from GIPHY, the searchable online database of GIFs, clips, and memes, allowing users to splice the content into their own videos.

According to the statement, Library will allow users to utilize “clips from their favorite shows, GIFs, memes and more by seamlessly integrating them into their TikTok videos.” Library will initially be populated with material directly available from GIPHY including GIPHY clips – GIFs that also feature audio content. Users will be able to grab content directly from Library and “incorporate it into their unique storytelling on TikTok.”

Clips available upon launch will include:

Reactions: much like GIFs, content that captures a raw emotional reaction and are relatable to users make perfect Clips

Quotes: memorable catchphrases and quotable moments from notable personalities

People: fandom is real, and people look for their favorite celebrities, athletes, etc. to help express themselves

Iconic moments: whether it’s an awards speech, beloved TV characters, or game-changing play, these big moments are bound to be shareable conversation starters

– via TikTok’s statement

TikTok hopes to expand Library’s content over time and grow to include “additional content sources, audio and sounds, text templates, creator content, and more, as we continue to innovate and spark creativity for our community.”

TikTok began rolling out the feature on Tuesday. If you don’t currently have it, expect the service to become available on your TikTok app very soon.

Once Library is available, there are only four steps required to use it:

1. Launch TikTok, and click the ‘Record’ button to open the camera.
2. Click the ‘Library’ icon in the sidebar. This opens the Library function.
3. Now use the search bar to find content. You may also scroll through the trending content to see popular content being used in other clips.
4. Make your selection and trim the clip to the desired length, then return to the shoot page to continue capturing content.

Have fun and good luck! Your next video clip interaction may just be the new TikTok trend.

Trends on TikTok come in all different flavors, from goofy dance trends to eye-rolling dad jokes, to jaw-dropping filters and everything in-between. The latest to hit the app just may bring a few happy tears to your eyes. Users across the video-sharing service are using a new app called TravelBoast to virtually reunite themselves with boyfriends, besties, and loved ones that have moved away. Coast to coast, users are reminiscing about relationships that will never be taken for granted.

The trend uses three ingredients. First, is the TravelBoast app, which is a cartoon mapping app that lets you make an animated video showing a route to any location on the globe featuring virtual cars and planes. Second, an assortment of photos of a user and a loved one currently living far apart from each other — sometimes even continents away! Lastly, Coldplay’s “Paradise”, or at least that seems to be the traditional sound clip for the trend. Users have been combining the three elements into videos that can be just as heartwarming as they are heartbreaking.

If you want to join in on the trend it’s easy. You will have to download the TravelBoast app to make your map though. After that, it’s just a matter of tracking down some of your favorite memories and posting the video to TikTok. Just follow the steps below:

1. Download the TravelBoast app compatible with your phone’s platform
2. Open the TravelBoast app on your phone.
3. Click ‘Start point’ in the top left corner, and type in the first location – generally your hometown.
4. Next, click ‘Destination’ in the top right corner, and enter your second location – the city where your SO, BFF, or family member currently lives.
5. Tap on the orange line and drag it to create a new dot. This will make the animated trip seem more dynamic and lifelike.
6. To change your vehicle, for example, to a train or airplane, just press and hold the car icon at your starting point, and select the appropriate vehicle then click the back button.
7. Once you’ve mapped your route, just press the play button on the bottom of the screen.
8. After the app your video is created, just select ‘Save video to camera roll.’

Now that you have your travel video, just upload it to TikTok and add whatever photos or footage you like to enhance it. You can add any music you like – although as stated, “Paradise” has been the hands-down favorite choice for the majority of trending videos.

Once you’ve posted, sit back and bask in the nostalgia. Share it with your absent person and enjoy the memories. Who knows? Your travelogue may be the next to go viral!

The British crime drama Top Boy has had a successful run and found an audience on Netflix, and now the streaming service has announced viewers will get one more season of adventures in London’s Summerhouse estate to follow.

The company posted the trailer above to YouTube earlier today, featuring 60 seconds of shakedowns, staredowns, shootouts, and flames. The show stars Ashley Walters and Kane Robinson, and Netflix also hinted their characters might not walk away to safety.

“There’s a time for everything. There’s a time for family and times we let them go. There’s a time to come together, and a time to ride out. There’s a time to build empires, and a time to burn them. Every top boy has their time, and that time is coming.”

Filming for what is being called the final chapter begins this summer. Apart from Walters and Robinson, other performers on the show include Shone Romulus, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Xavien Russell, Kierston Wareing, and Michael Ward as Jamie Tovell. The series currently has a 95 percent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and for Jochan Embley of the London Evening Standard, its reputation is well-earned.

“It’s all bleak, but it’s also riveting. Top Boy tells painful stories, but ones that need to be told. By the eighth and final episode [of season two] things reach breaking point. The ending – and what an ending it is – suggests another season could be in the offing. You’d be surprised if it wasn’t.”

Photo by Mark Mainz/Getty Images

At this point, everybody who hasn’t been hiding under a rock knows that Will Smith and Chris Rock have history. But what they may not know is how far back that history goes. Not only Have Smith and Rock worked together back in the 90s when both of them were still climbing the ladder to Hollywood A-list status, but Rock has a working history with Jada Pinkett that goes back years as well.

As social media has exploded in the wake of Will Smith slapping Rock at last night’s Oscar ceremony, some people are remembering Rock’s long ago 1995 appearance on Smith’s breakout sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in an episode that can be categorized as “problematic” at best when seen through the lens of 2020s standards.

The episode in question, entitled “Get a Job,” was filmed in the sixth season and first aired on Sept. 25, 1995. In the episode, Smith’s character Will attempts to become an assistant talent coordinator for his cousin Hilary’s talk show. Will scores a big chance when he is told famous comedian Maurice, played by Rock, will do the show if Will dates his sister and the evening goes well. The sister is played by Rock as well, and the date goes predictably badly, full of vaguely transphobic and otherwise face-palm-inducing 90s vintage wacky hijinks.

The episode was filmed when Rock’s career was in a transitional phase. He had left SNL, and though he was still working regularly as a stand-up, he had not reached the level of success his stand-up special Bring the Pain would bring him just one year later in 1996. Similarly, Smith was widely known through Fresh Prince but had only acted in a handful of films by the time the sixth season was filmed. It would be two years later, in 1997, that Smith would shoot to superstar status following his performance in the first Men in Black feature.

Rock has a shared history with Pinkett Smith as well, the pair co-starred as Marty the Zebra and Gloria the Hippo, respectively in the animate franchise Madagascar. While Rock and Pinkett Smith were likely not hanging out in the sound booth at the same time while filming, they definitely accompanied each other on press tours for all three movies and have undoubtedly been colleagues at the very least. In 2012 Rock shared the information that his own daughters were fans of Willow, Smith and Pinkett Smith’s musician daughter, during a joint interview with Fuse. “Hey, my kids listen to your kids! ’21st Century Girl’ Oh my god,” said Rock.

The three have all hung out socially in the past and have been spotted out and about with each other and with their families ever since 1995, when Smith first began dating Pinkett. However, the trio’s friendship may have taken a turn for the worse after Rock made the couple’s decision to boycott the 2016 Academy Awards — which Rock hosted — due to a lack of diversity in the wake of the “Oscars so white” controversy.

I understand. I understand you’re mad—Jada’s mad her man Will was not nominated for Concussion [Smith’s 2015 film],” Rock said in his monologue. “I get it. Tell the truth. I get it. It’s not fair that Will was this good and didn’t get nominated. It’s also not fair that Will was paid $20 million for Wild Wild West.“

Whether last night’s incident was the case of too many straws for the camel to bear or just the wrong remark at the wrong time, only Smith can say. For the present, Sean “Diddy” Combs has assured the press that the incident is behind them and the two men are mending their friendship. “That’s not a problem. That’s over. I can confirm that,” Combs said. “It’s all love…They’re brothers.”

Image via TikTok

Dance crazes and wacky challenges are a big part of what keeps TikTok one of the most popular social media platforms in the world, but there’s another cornerstone to the app’s content that never seems to fail to go viral: pranking your friends. TikTok’s latest way to make fun of the people who love you is a fake Google search that falsely predicts how long someone has to live based on a particular characteristic.

The “prank” is pretty simple to pull off. Users display a search result ⏤ typically from Google ⏤ from a life expectancy calculator based on a certain characteristic of the person they want to prank. Typical parameters are “how long do tall people live,” “how long do emos live,” or “how long do idiots live.” The prankster then shows a message featuring lyrics from “I’ll Never Forget You” ⏤ either the Noisettes or the Zara Larsson version ⏤ with the track in question playing throughout the video.

Perhaps it’s not the most sophisticated joke you’ll hear online this year, but the video call-outs seem to be a hit, with some of the videos receiving hundreds and thousands of likes and views.

The trend is the latest to prominently feature “Never Forget You.” Though the Noisettes and MNEK songs are two different songs by different songwriters, both trended prominently last year in videos TikTok users produced to highlight a person or pet that had significantly impacted their lives. However, those videos tended to be much more heartfelt than the newer trend.

Image via TikTok

Like most social media apps out there, TikTok counts on a bit of a Mobius strip when it comes to user engagement. Users come to the platform to indulge in other users’ content, and often become content creators themselves, if only to recreate some of TikTok’s many viral dance and song trends. But the company’s higher-ups aren’t above hedging their bets when it comes to keeping viewers amused. TikTok’s newest viral challenge is “in-house” for a change — a built-in interactive game users can play themselves.

The Stacking Challenge is an interactive game that is part of the platform’s effects menu. The goal is straightforward enough; simply attempt to build the highest tower you can, by placing a repeating series of colorful blocks on top of each other. Of course, the challenge only appears easy on its face. In reality, the process is deceptively difficult. You can stop the blocks by blinking, but they must line up onto each other exactly. If they don’t, the overlapping part will fall off — resulting in an increasingly smaller surface to stack upon. Users playing the game can find themselves rapidly running out of space.

Some challengers are pulling in substantial likes by demonstrating their prowess. One user, _saddestnightout, even managed to go viral with 314 thousand likes when he demonstrated his own hack of blinking in time to the game’s soundtrack, in a video entitled “The Beat is All You Need”.

If you’d like to give the challenge a go yourself, you should be able to immediately, if you already have TikTok on your device (and if it isn’t available — the game hasn’t made it to every country just yet). To play along, follow the steps below:

1. Launch your TikTok app
2. Tap the Discover tab
3. Enter “Stacking Challenge” in the search bar
4. In “Effects,” tap the pink record button next to the challenge
5. Tap on “Try this effect”
6. Point your screen-side camera at your face and watch as the blocks float by. You must stop each block by blinking when they line up.
7. Once you miss, the game is over, and you can try again

Once you get a result you like, share it. Maybe your high score might be the next to go viral!

Brian Johnson is jacked. Incredibly so. Cartoonishly so. Johnson, aka “the Liver King” has been muscling — quite literally — his way into user’s video feeds across TikTok lately. He’s lifting weights, sleeping on wood planks (in his mansion), he’s simulating prehistoric “hunts” and — above all else — he’s trying to get you to eat raw meat.

While humans have been consuming raw foods for all of history, raw food advocacy has seen a recent uptick in recent years, with celebs such as Heidi Montag touting the diet’s supposed benefits, including providing enzymes “lost” through the cooking process — although there is no current, peer-reviewed science to back up said claims. The Liver King’s advocacy goes beyond just the occasional —or even weekly — plate of steak tartare, however.

Johnson advocates an entire “back to nature” philosophy, dedicated to a style of “ancestral living” supposedly based on the diet and habits of primitive man. He even refers to his many dedicated followers as “primals”. His videos, almost all of which have hundreds of thousands and even millions of views, feature his over-the-top workout regimes, his “simulated” primordial hunts, self-help positivity messaging, and of course, meals that often cross the line from gustatory to disgust-atory, including raw bull testicles, animal organ smoothies, and his trademark — one entire pound of raw liver and sea salt ingested daily.

And, not surprisingly, Johnson uses his now well-established platform to hawk his own brand of supplements — how our primal ancestors had access to them is anyone’s guess — that go hand in hand with “ancestral tenets” as eating “naturally” and going to bed early. Follow the routine, Johnson implies, and you just may find yourself looking down on a sculptural eight-pack set of abdominals all your own. Start with liver, get some really good sleep, move like Liver King, eat like Liver King, shield like Liver King. Live like the ancestral man, and you’ll have the hormone profile that’s double or triple of the manicured modern man.”

Claims like this are hardly a rarity on TikTok. Although the platform is far better-known for its popular dopamine-inducing and time-wasting dance craze and challenge videos, the so-called wellness industry has taken to the format practically en masse. Scroll through any given user’s feed, and you’ll find at least one video extolling the benefits of frozen honey, rice water hair baths, push-up challenges, or dry scooping your protein powders for every five videos of zoomers dancing to “Corvette Corvette.”

However, eating a mostly raw meat diet isn’t exactly common sense, “hormone profile” or no. Whatever devotees of the extreme diet might claim, there is little to no hard data that proves raw meat is in any way more beneficial for you than cooked meat, and raw meat is most definitely a breeding ground for potentially harmful food-borne pathogens. Salmonella, Clostridium perfringens, E. coli, Listeria monocytogenes, and Campylobacter can all be found in raw meat, but are generally destroyed by cooking processes.

The Liver King is definitely a standout in a crowded field; his New Agey ancestor worship helps allay the bro-ness that hampers a lot of insanely over-muscled wellness creators on the app. And his relentless positivity — well-tempered, with a “by your bootstraps” capitalist tinge — makes him more approachable than many of the “woo woo” body, mind, and spirit types as well. It’s a combo that has made Johnson one of the platform’s stand-out successes. He has over 1.8 million followers thus far, and counting. Not bad for a lifestyle entrepreneur who, only seven months ago, had little digital presence whatsoever.

Johnson’s approach to the platform was navigated by his PR firm, 1DS Collective, a management agency that specializes in branding through social media. Johnson approached the firm to develop his brand and create businesses based on his “ancestral tenets” philosophy. “Brian Johnson AKA Liver King has made a fierce debut across social platforms this month. Led by yours truly, the team at 1DS Collective. It’s been an honor to set the stage for Liver King,⁣” 1DS wrote in a September 2021 Instagram post.

Although TikTok has spread both Johnson’s message and his sales, he is adamant that isn’t his main focus. “I don’t give a shit if I change one person’s life,” he told Buzzfeed News. “I give a shit about changing millions of lives. The narrative we’re faced with today, whatever’s happening mainstream, is not working. I’m convinced there’s a better way to do life.”

Photo via A FUSCO/YouTube

TikTok is home to a seemingly never-ending stream of trends, challenges, and viral moments. Creators flock to the app to share amusing experiences, dance, and occasionally indulge their nostalgia through a timely trend that leans on special childhood memories.

Such is the case with the video-sharing app’s latest trend, which uses audio from the decades-long run of PBS’s Reading Rainbow. The educational children’s television series ran for more than 20 years, between 1983 and 2006, and became a staple of hundreds of thousands of childhoods during its run. The audio that accompanies the show’s intro is instantly recognizable to fans of the former series and has become the official soundtrack for TikTok’s latest trend.

TikTok’s Reading Rainbow filter

On TikTok, the Reading Rainbow filter is typically used to emphasize a situation in which someone feels out of their depth. The audio is commonly paired with a space-themed background, which drifts past several planets, and the sun, along with a set of daunting math to really drive home how lost people feel in a given situation.

Most of the videos participating in the trend clock in at less than 15 seconds, using just the opening lines from the intro to PBS’s popular series. Uploads cover everything from concepts that are difficult to grasp — like daylight savings time — to amusing or baffling childhood stories.

The filter also prompted a hilarious exchange of stories, after one creator used it to detail the two weeks she drank “vodka” flavored coffee, only to later learn that “Bailey’s Irish Cream is, in fact, alcohol.” This prompted another creator to share her story of accidental alcohol use in the comment section, and ultimately inspired her to make her own TikTok discussing the week her mom “accidentally packed Mike’s Hard Lemonade” into her school lunches.

There’s really no limit to what the Reading Rainbow theme can accompany, as proved by the massive range of TikToks leaning into the trend. Hundreds of creators have already found a use for the popular audio, and it doesn’t look ready to slow down any time soon.

Image via TikTok

A lot of TikTok users woke up today to a nasty surprise. User videos throughout the site are vanishing for no apparent reason, due to an apparent glitch that’s affecting iPhone and Android users across the globe.

Usually, a user’s videos will appear in a large grid — depending on how many the user in question has uploaded — underneath the user’s profile, but those affected by the glitch are seeing nothing but a black area with a message reading “No Videos Yet.”

As is often the case with such glitches, TikTok is keeping mum on the issue. TikTok is no stranger to service-wide glitches; just a few weeks ago, many users were experiencing sounds vanishing mysteriously from their favorites tab, for instance. The unwritten policy seems to be to solve the problem as quickly as possible in-house, while avoiding any kind of social media reach-out to users. Often the best “fix” for a technical issue with TikTok is to merely wait until the IT workers at the company find and fix the problem.

Users worried that their videos have vanished forever likely don’t need to panic at this point. It’s more than likely that they are still “there,” with “there” being the servers they were stored on. The glitch is simply preventing user access, and once it’s fixed, the videos should show up under the user profile, just like they have in the past.

That said, there are a few things users can do to attempt to address the issue. First, attempt a hard reboot of your phone. Press and hold your power button for 20 seconds if you are an Android user. iPhone users should hold the sleep/wake button and volume down button simultaneously. Once the phone has powered down, press the power button, or the sleep/wake button, to restart.

If that doesn’t do the trick, you can also try clearing TikTok’s cache memory on your device. Just open TikTok, tap Profile in the bottom right, tap the 3-line icon in the top right, and tap “Clear cache.”

If videos still aren’t showing up after that…it’s time to play the waiting game. And yes, the waiting game sucks. You may want to find something else to amuse yourself while TikTok’s techs attmpt to patch the glitch.

Photo via @KeshaRose/Twitter

In the weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, people around the globe have been searching for ways to help those affected by the conflict.

On top of donating to charities and participating in food drives, people are striving to think up creative new ways to lend their support. The search for alternate ways to help inspired people to rent out Ukrainian Airbnbs, buy up Ukrainian art from Etsy stores, and create new technologies to assist citizens fleeing the war.

Users on TikTok, eager to join charitable efforts, seized on the idea of using their platform for good. Claims of TikTok “dances to help Ukraine” quickly started spreading on the platform as users sought to put their TikTok-honed skills to good use.

Is ‘5 dances to help Ukraine’ real?

The idea that dancing will actually lend any help to Ukraine is ludicrous, and very much false, but that isn’t stopping users from participating in the odd trend.

A hilariously scathing article from Cinch News started the rumor that certain TikTok dances could “scare Putin into submission” and soon inspired numerous creators to get in on the trend. It also listed several dances that will supposedly frighten the Russians back into their own country. Many of the songs on the list — which include Jason Derulo’s “Savage Love,” Kesha’s “Cannibal,” and Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage” — are clearly satirical. Their names are pseudo “scary” and the accompanying dances are maybe supposed to seem aggressive?

Thankfully, very few creators seem to have actually taken the idea seriously. Even as the trend was spreading on TikTok, it was getting flamed on other social media sites. Users flocked to Twitter to mock the notion of dancing to end war and shredded any creators naive enough to fall for the stunt.

“I like how it’s ‘to help Ukraine fight Russia’ as if Ukraine soldiers are hooked up to a machine powered only by TikTok dances,” one person joked, according to Distractify.

People were, overall, utterly flabbergasted at the notion of war-eliminating TikTok dances, and delighted in the opportunity to absolutely wreck the few unfortunate fools who took Tina Mironov — the author of the Cinch News article — seriously. Cinch News is straightforward about its role as a satirical news publication, describing itself as “your most trusted, biased news source” before proclaiming that readers “will listen to us and not question us.”

Very few people seemed aware of the satirical aims of the article, however, leaving them to spiral into a pit of despair at what our world has become. They proclaimed that we have come to “a complete downward spiral in evolution” and swore to exact revenge on Mironov.

The trend, for those still unaware of its satirical origins, is being compared to half of Hollywood banding together for that brutally cringey “Imagine” cover.

For those in on the joke, however, it is lending some much-needed amusement to the current situation unraveling in Ukraine. And it’s tricking at least a few TikTok creators into making themselves look like absolute dullards.

For those interested in actually helping Ukrainians in need, there are a few stellar ways to lend aid. The best route, according to Unicef Senior Emergencies Specialist Dan Walden, is to donate money to a range of charities. Well-intentioned goods are appreciated, he told The Guardian, but often take too long to actually reach Ukrainian citizens.

Donating to charities is the most immediate and direct way to assist Ukrainians in need and can be done by anyone with some extra income to spare. Browse this list from Charity Watch, which lays out the best charities providing aid to Ukraine, to find the best option for you.