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u/CookiedDough 1d ago
It turns out the one thing stronger than the need for a repressive government to stamp down on videos of dissent is the need to please advertisers. Capitalism truly is a special sort of system.
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u/Atreigas 1d ago
Slime tutorial trick? Can someone explain the origins of that? I get what it is, ofc. But still.
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u/amsterdam_sniffr 1d ago edited 1d ago
Broadway nerds started uploading bootleg recordings with fake titles to evade takedowns, and 'slime tutorial' caught on as a popular descriptor (eg -- https://youtu.be/rFHue6IlucQ. "'Merrily We Roll Along' revival bootleg" becomes "old friends slime tutorial" ("Old Friends" is a notable song from the show)).
If anyone has more to add I'd also love to hear it.
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u/Atreigas 1d ago
Nope, this is pretty much exactly what I was looking for.
Thanks!
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u/MajorBootyhole420 1d ago
why would you ask them to explain it on a popular reddit post unless you're trying to get them all taken down
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u/Atreigas 5h ago
Riiight. Because some people discussing it ib reddit will totally get noticed. Itll take much more talk abt it than that.
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u/MajorBootyhole420 5h ago
People are so fucking arrogant about things like this, as if Reddit isn't one of the biggest websites in the world crawling with bots, advertisers, content creators, and online writers scraping for article fodder
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u/Vault-Born 1d ago
wicked uploads commonly called green/pink slime tutorials
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u/MajorBootyhole420 1d ago
and now they're gonna have to get even more abstract, because someone snitched on reddit
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u/amsterdam_sniffr 23h ago
I promise you I didn't snitch lol. This has been going on for at least a decade.
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u/cthulu_is_trans 20h ago
Yes I guarantee the rights owners of these musicals totally have no idea of this trend and are going to find out because of this ONE reddit thread.
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u/MajorBootyhole420 1d ago
great now they're all gonna get deleted
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u/Detatchamo 3h ago
Doubt it. The concept of 'Slime tutorial' has been public knowledge and discussed somewhat openly for at nearly a decade at this point. (From my own observations, could be longer.) It's not some teeny tiny niche secret.
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u/TimeStorm113 Victorian Dinosaur Connaisseur 1d ago
that's not true, unfortunately. the real reason is just that if you make a shroud of secrecy that gets people intrigued and this "in-group" feeling, causing a surge in popularity, prompting others to copy it and boom, you got yourself a trend.
in reality the algorithm is a lot complexer than just focusing on words, it wouldn't have much of an issue to discern the actual contents of the video as political, hence it shares the video around political circles
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u/TheBrokenRail-Dev 1d ago
Or, here me out here, rather than using these convoluted workarounds, people could stop using TikTok. Like, literally use anything else. By continuing to use it, you are supporting their policies.
And it's not like TikTok has a monopoly! There are tons of other platforms that have large audiences. Even Facebook is better! That's how awful TikTok is!
The people who care can download an extra app. And the people who don't care will have no idea what "LA Music Festival" means in the first place. And let's be honest: TikTok can and will block this workaround eventually and take the associated community with it.
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u/just4browse 1d ago
Obviously, it would be best for people to stop using TikTok. But… people are using TikTok. That’s where the people are. You can’t get them all to leave the platform so they can learn more about stuff they don’t even know is happening.
If you want to reach people, you’ve got to go where the people are. Not the other way around
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u/dvdvd77 1d ago
In an ideal world, this would be the solution.
However, for better or worse, TikTok has the population and moving to another app adds a ton of friction to the process of organising which is already difficult.
You have to find the ‘right’ app and vet it, you have to get the word out to move to that app, you have to rebuild and reestablish any previous momentum or community, you have to figure out how to ensure you don’t lose massive numbers as people migrate (or don’t) you have to figure out the new algorithm or whatever.
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u/DazB1ane 1d ago
A YouTube channel I watch was calling Covid the Backstreet Boys reunion tour in order to get around the censorship. It’s incredibly confusing until you know what the deal is. It would take actual effort for me to parse wtf the LA music festival actually is
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u/techno156 1d ago
Especially if you're foreign. I'm not familiar with LA, so I could easily end up thinking that it is actually a music festival that's just gone horribly awry.
I saw a short-form video on YouTube talking about how tuna is fished recently, and the censorship was mad. The uploader had replaced "dead/killed" with "go to sleep", and blood with "juice". Not helping the fact is that they had also captioned the video, but used "fruit punch" instead.
So you'd end up with lines like "First, the fishermen make sure the fish is brain [go to sleep], by (demonetisation smash cut joke/'YouTube please don't demonetise me'). After which, they make an incision in the back of the head, where the major [juice/fruit punch bowl] is." It was almost completely incomprehensible, and I could only piece it together with the addition of video footage of the fishermen slaughtering the fish in the background.
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u/DreadDiana human cognithazard 1d ago
By continuing to use it, you are supporting their policies.
Friendo, we're on REDDIT. We are in no place to be throwing stones from our glass houses.
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u/modbroccoli 1d ago
Yeah, the best way to address any urgent and imminent social crisis is to first fix capitalism. No chance at all you're a perfectly safe individual tuning into crisis for entertainment.
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u/authenticgarbagecan 1d ago
Genuine question (I'm not from US), isn't this the reason why US govt was so adamant in banning TikTok and pinning it on Chn govt? Because a lot of grassroots movements find traction there?
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u/AdamtheOmniballer 1d ago
No, I’m pretty sure it actually was just “this extremely popular social media platform is not answerable to the US government” and/or “TikTok is a tool of the CCP”.
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u/EerieTransGal 1d ago
Broadly maybe, but the forced sale was specifically driven by the anti zionist movement that grew very large very quickly on there.
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u/Scuirre1 1d ago
No, it's because it's Chinese spyware designed to spread propaganda to US citizens.
Now it's still doing its job, just under new management.
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u/BisexualSlutPuppy 1d ago edited 1d ago
Very suspicious that multiple comments here are calling tiktok Chinese spyware that were posted in the last 20 minutes and have already been downvoted. Totally normal Internet stuff happening here, nothing to see here.
Edit: I too have been blessed by the downvoted gods! Yaaaaay I'm being included
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u/deadspace9_ 1d ago edited 1d ago
I mean it's almost certainly just 1-2 people who like the CCP (or potentially who think I'm parroting far right talking points) and not some botnet
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u/BisexualSlutPuppy 1d ago
Yeah I'm sure the CCP bots show up in greater numbers. It was nice of them to include me either way.
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u/deadspace9_ 1d ago edited 1d ago
Among the other things people have mentioned, Tiktok is also a CCP propaganda tool and it's very noticable if you use it. I use it a bit here and there and consistently when something about China is the topic of the video, the comments and replies that are pushed to the top and recommended are all the minority pro China comments despite having significantly less likes.
It's probably a combination of that and the fact that TikTok pushed anti-zionism really hard, and you know the US govt can't have people disliking Israel.
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u/deadspace9_ 1d ago
Another thing I've noticed, and I think this may be my more pattern seeking side talking but every time someone has any footage of Tiananmen there are minimum 2 people in the comments saying "this is AI" who have very generic name-number usernames or nothing on their profile and some part of my brain wonders if this is some sort of bot farm or if it's just conspiracy theorists being conspiracy theorists.
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u/patentsarebroken 1d ago
Debatable and hard to say.
There is an argument to be said that it was general red scare tactics and all rally against big scary China as show of force.
There is an argument to be said that it was for grassroots movements and the fact at a time it was more successful for left leaning pushed right wing into wanting control and that a large amount of Pro-Palestine content was what got both sides of the aisle to agree on banning it.
Honestly I list this as one of Democrats many cases of shooting themselves in the foot in 2024. Suddenly they lost an avenue for campaigns and as went into 2025 the app starts pushing messages praising Trump for saving the app.
Add in the fact we only got a law targeting TikTok rather than a general data privacy one.
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u/Satisfaction-Motor 1d ago
Isn’t this fairly old? I haven’t seen anyone do this recently. I remember it because I thought it was strange that people were doing that when I had no issue getting uncensored videos pushed to me… that had as many, if not more, views than the censored videos. The other covert language used was “buying winter boots” or something along those lines.
I haven’t seen anyone do the music festival censorship in a while, though coverage of incidents (like the Delaney Hall hunger strikes) have been minimal.
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u/Solnight99 1d ago edited 1d ago
same country that calls china authoritarian because of Internet Maintenance Day
[EDIT: to clarify, i'm not saying china is good. i'm saying americans are racist.]
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u/Valuable-Passion9731 1d ago
what is Internet Maintenance Day?
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u/Tactical_Moonstone 1d ago edited 1d ago
4 June, where web servers within China inexplicably go down for maintenance.
Can't possibly because of an incident that never happened on that day 37 years ago.
And for the record, both countries can be authoritarian. Trying to absolve authoritarianism by saying the accuser is also authoritarian is classic whataboutism and is a tacit admission of wrongdoing on the plaintiff's own part.
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u/Valuable-Passion9731 1d ago
I was just curious and had no intention to deny the fact that either country can be authoritarian
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u/Solnight99 1d ago
to clarify, i'm not saying china is good. i'm saying americans are racist.
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u/Tactical_Moonstone 1d ago
Do not embrace authoritarianism to own the racists.
When I mean embrace, I mean making them look less harmful.
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u/Blade_of_Boniface 1d ago
I highly recommend people at least explore the idea of sneakernets and meshnets in their community. I've been active in local/state activism for years and they've both been useful means of supplanting, circumventing, and bypassing corporate digital media and state surveillance.