TikTok, for many, is an incredibly exciting platform, and even those who turn their noses up at it often find themselves engaging with TikTok content (and TikTok content creators) on other popular social media platforms – a prime example of this is the Tweet by user @GarethWaugh that has since gone on to become a meme which reads, “No, I don’t watch TikToks, I watch Instagram reels of TikTok videos that were popular two weeks ago. LIKE A GROWN UP.” A prime example of how non-TikTok users view TikTok.
This week on Brunch, we chat with an OG TikTok content creator – someone who was creating TikTok content long before it became the brand we know today and went by the name Muscial.ly (in essence, Musical.ly was a separate platform that was acquired by Beijing-based tech company ByteDance, which already owned the popular TikTok, a Muscial.ly equivalent – though in China, TikTok is called Douyin. In August 2018, TikTok absorbed Musical.ly, and all Musical.ly accounts were automatically migrated to TikTok).
Eshi Dias (@eshi.dias on TikTok), has been creating content on TikTok (and its platform by any other name) since 2016 and was one of the few Sri Lankan creators on the platform at the time. Of course, at this time, Eshi was quite young and wasn’t mindfully creating content for an audience. In her words: “It was mainly just me being a teenager doing fun stuff.”
The person behind the platform
Like many creators, Eshi’s journey to becoming a considered content creator on TikTok began with the pandemic. Prior to this, she had been a casual user of Musical.ly with an accompanying Instagram page that had a significant following. However, pre-2020, she had taken a break from Musical.ly.
“When Musical.ly started, it was all hyped and everyone started using it but there weren’t many Sri Lankans on it; it was more international. The hype died down though, and I also took a break from Musical.ly. I did create an Instagram account to go with it and I posted a couple of my Musical.ly videos on it and that gained a lot of followers, but over time I took that down as well,” Eshi explained about her break from the platforms, and it had been while she was on hiatus that Musical.ly was absorbed by TikTok.
Then came Covid. “TikTok just skyrocketed, and I managed to get my Musical.ly account back, but now it was TikTok. People had a lot of free time and nothing to do at home and everyone got really creative,” Eshi shared.
“I got back into it, kind of because of peer pressure – I saw a lot of people posting TikToks on Instagram, and I was curious and wanted to try it out. The videos were super fun, not as long as other videos, and were mostly mimicking another person’s voice or that sort of thing. It was very simple but not something we had seen at that time.”
Fast forwarding to today, Eshi is a well-known TikTok content creator with over 192,000 followers. The majority of her content is casual and trend-driven, taking popular TikTok and other social media trends and doing her own take on them. Her niche is dance videos, and Eshi creates this kind of content to make her page an escape.
“I feel like watching people dancing, in addition to dances being able to go viral, also take your mind off things – when you come on TikTik, you want someone to make you laugh or smile. Once you deliver that kind of content to them, they respond through likes, views and comments, and say how they want more of these. My audience, I would say, is a fun-loving, young and non-judgemental audience. Of course, there is hate sometimes, and there will always be hate, but what I really love about my audience is that they’re very positive,” she said.
Being a content creator
Like her content itself, Eshi approaches her content creation casually too. If she sees an interesting TikTok trend, she saves it, and if it’s complicated she practises it for a while before moving on to filming it. It’s not something she puts a great deal of thought into, unless it is something she’s doing for a brand to make sure she meets both her vision and the brand’s.
All content creators work with brands, and collaborating with brands form a huge part of a content creator’s portfolio and income. Eshi first focused on creating authentic content that she was happy with and on growing her following, which led to brands reaching out to her.
“My first time working with a brand was actually really exciting. I’d seen other people doing it but didn’t think anyone would reach out to me. Personally, I have never reached out to a brand and asked them to work with me and I don’t know anyone who has done that either. It’s more waiting for someone to reach out and ask me if I’m willing to promote their product and it was super exciting the first time it happened. It made me feel like the thought and effort I was putting into my content was worth it.”
One of the challenges Eshi faces as a creator is motivating herself to create content. “Sometimes, every once in a while, you have a week where you see like four trends, and if I’m stuck with studies or assignments I can struggle with motivation, but overall, I wouldn’t say making content is the most challenging thing to do,” Eshi shared.
“In any case, I like to get my work done ahead of time, and even the brands who work with me know this. Even with assignments, I like to finish in advance. I put pressure on myself, which is hard on me anxiety-wise.”
TikTok as a creator platform
TikTok, like any social media platform, receives its fair share of naysayers who make arguments along the lines of the platform breeding an environment for harsh judgement, bullying and hate.
As someone who has been on TikTik since before it became the TikTok we know today, we asked Eshi for thoughts on TikTik as a platform. Eshi highlighted the diversity and versatility of TikTok. “For me as a creator, TikTok lets me be myself. For a long time, I was used to being only on Instagram, and that’s about trying to be perfect, taking the best picture from the best angles etc. On TikTok, you can really be yourself. No one cares how you comb your hair or how your previous day was. People will listen. It’s a very non-judgemental platform,” Eshi said.
Speaking of hate on TikTok and how she manages it, looking back to her Musical.ly days, Eshi shared that there had been no hate at all, and that the interactions she had were overwhelmingly encouraging. Following Covid-19, however, everyone had begun getting on to TikTok as a platform, and the bigger a platform, the bigger the potential for hate, and there had been a big wave of hate when she started doing TikTok, she said, not just from people on TikTok, but from people who weren’t on TikTok who criticised her for being on the platform itself, although now the people who had criticised TikTok were also on it.
As a platform too, TikTok has taken steps to minimise hateful behaviour, with very strict community guidelines that limit the behaviour and language creators can use, age limits on who can join the platform, and additional features that allow creators to nip hateful comments in the bud.
“There is a feature where you can filter words out. With my TikTok, I have found that most hateful comments are made in Sinhala and I have about 20 words filtered out so every time someone comments any word like that or similar, TikTok just filters it out and gives me permission to approve it or not show it on my comment section. I can delete the comment or hide it. This feature is something I have found to be unique to TikTok. On Instagram, for example, I have limited comments to followers only, so for someone to leave a hateful comment they have to follow me, which to me wouldn’t make sense for them to do.”
“Now the hate is less, as opposed to during the lockdown, but there is still hate,” Eshi said, adding that as a creator she had learnt to weed out hateful comments from constructive criticism. “I know what they’re saying is not true, and it’s just misjudgement, but some time ago it did get to me, but then I thought to myself, ‘why am I taking this on to my head?’ With time you get used to the hate, and it also dies down.”
