Cindi White spent more than $25,000 on TikTok Influencers. TikTok's Live Matches have a dark side.

She spent her inheritance sending money to TikTok Livestreamers. What started as a game turned into addiction.::Cindi White spent more than $25,000 on TikTok Influencers. TikTok’s Live Matches have a dark side.

  • PizzasDontWearCapesEnglish
    55·
    1 year ago

    The matches imitate a video game. Two TikTokers stream side-by-side, divided into “red” and “blue” teams. As a timer counts down from five minutes, they go to wild and kooky lengths to get their fans to send them these gifts.

    The creativity to create things like these battles is interesting

    We really are fleshy machines that just need our buttons pushed the right way to get us to obsess over almost anything

    • NevermindNoMind@lemmy.worldEnglish
      361·
      1 year ago

      It really is interesting and of course kind of sad. She was retired, living alone, a world traveler until the pandemic hit but plunged into isolation after that. While we might think it’s silly, I can emphasize with the appeal this might have to someone like that:

      Then, seconds before a match ended, she’d hit her favorite creator with a $13 disco ball or a $29 Jet Ski — if she planned it right — just enough to push them over the edge and win.

      The chats would erupt into a frenzy, and the streamer and their fans would shower her with praise. “It’s like somebody on TV calling out your name, especially if there’s over a thousand people in the room,” White said. “It really does do something to you. You feel like you’re somebody.”

      I remember my grandma would lock herself in a little room playing Tetris on the Nintendo for literally 8-10 hours a day. I imagine if she had lived to see tik tok, she’d be worse off then the lady in the article.

    • Infynis@midwest.socialEnglish
      9·
      1 year ago

      Hilarious. I can’t believe they actually did a Cash War. I watched a Twitch streamer joke about this a few years before Tik Tok existed

    • foggy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      1 year ago

      Be! Excited! Be, Be Excited!

      Edit: To anyone too young to know, or simply out of the loop, this is from Requiem for a Dream. No doubt you recognize that music; the ubiquitous “oh so dramatic” music. That… Was scored for this movie. This was it’s original application. There’s a reason it’s ubiquitous today. Fuck. The gravity of this movie is bringing me to tears rn and I haven’t seen it in over a decade. If you haven’t seen it, watch it.