TikToker (pronounced tik-tok-ah)
(1) One who is a regular or frequent viewer of the
content posted on the short-form video (which, with mission-creep, can no been up to
ten (10) minutes in duration) sharing site TikTok.com.
(2) One who is a regular or frequent content provider on
the TikTok platform.
(3) With a variety of spellings (ticktocker, tictoker,
tiktoka etc), a slang term for a clock or watch, derived from the alternating
ticking sound, as that made by a clock (archaic).
(4) In computing, with the spelling ticktocker (or ticktocker), slang for a software element which emulates the sound of a ticking clock, used usually in conjunction with digitals depictions of analogue clocks.
2018: The ancestor form (ticktock or tick-tock) seems not to have been used until the mid-nineteenth century and was purely imitative of the sound of mechanical clocks. Tick (in the sense of "a quiet but sharp sound") was from the Middle English tek (light touch, tap) and tock was also onomatopoeic; when used in conjunction with tick was a reference to the clicking sounds similar to those made by the movements of a mechanical clock. The use of TikToker (in the sense of relating to users (consumers & content providers) of the short-form video (which, with mission-creep, can be up to ten (10) minutes in duration) sharing site TikTok.com probably began in 2018 (the first documented reference) although it may early have been in oral use. The –er suffix was from the Middle English –er & -ere, from the Old English -ere, from the Proto-Germanic -ārijaz, thought most likely to have been borrowed from the Latin –ārius where, as a suffix, it was used to form adjectives from nouns or numerals. In English, the –er suffix, when added to a verb, created an agent noun: the person or thing that doing the action indicated by the root verb. The use in English was reinforced by the synonymous but unrelated Old French –or & -eor (the Anglo-Norman variant -our), from the Latin -ātor & -tor, from the primitive Indo-European -tōr. When appended to a noun, it created the noun denoting an occupation or describing the person whose occupation is the noun. TikToker is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is TikTokers (the mixed upper & lower case is correct by commercial convention but not always followed). The PRC- (People’s Republic of China) based holding company ByteDance is said to have chosen the name “TikTok” because it was something suggestive of the “short, snappy” nature of the platform’s content; they understood the target market and its alleged attention span (which, like the memory famously associated with goldfish might be misleading).
Those who use TikTok (whether as content providers & consumers) are called “tiktokers” and the longer the aggregate duration of one’s engagement with the platform, the more of a tiktoker one is. The formation followed the earlier, self-explanatory “YouTuber” and the use for similar purposes (indicating association) for at least decades. So the noun tiktoker is a neutral descriptor but it can also be used as a slur. In February 2024, at the People’s Choice Awards ceremony held in Los Angeles, singer Billie Eilish (b 2001) was filmed leaning over to Kylie Minogue (b 1968) ,making the sotto voce remark “There’s some, like, TikTokers here…” with the sort of distaste Marie Antoinette (1755–1793; Queen Consort of France 1774-1792) might have displayed if pointing out to her sympatetic the unpleasing presence of peasants. The clip went viral on X (formerly known as Twitter) before spreading to Tiktok. Clearly there is a feeling of hierarchy in the industry and her comments triggered some discussion about the place of essentially amateur content creators at mainstream Hollywood events. That may sound strange given that a platform like TikTok would, prima facie, seem the very definition of the “people’s choice” but these events have their own history, associations and implications and what social media sites have done to the distribution models has been quite a disturbance and many established players, even some who have to some extent benefited from the platforms, find the intrusion of the “plague of TikTokers” disturbing.
Pop Crave's clip of the moment, Billie Eilish & Kylie Minogue, People's Choice Awards ceremony, Los Angeles, February 2024.
There will be layers to Ms Eilish’s view. One is explained in terms of mere proximity, the segregation of pop culture celebrities into “A List”, B List, D List” etc an important component of the creation and maintenance of one’s public image and an A Lister like her would not appreciate being photographed at an event with those well down the alphabet sitting at the next table; it cheapens her image. Properly managed, these images can translate into millions (and these days even billions) of dollars so this is not a matter of mere vanity and something for awards ceremonies to consider; if the TikTokers come to be seen as devaluing their brand to the extent the A Listers ignore their invitations, the events either have to move to a down-market niche or just be cancelled. Marshall McLuhan’s (1911-1980) book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964) pre-dates social media by decades but its best-remembered phrase (“The medium is the message”) could have been designed for the era, the idea being that the medium on which content is distributed should be first point of understanding significance, rather than actual content. McLuhan’s point was that the initial assessment of the veracity or the value of something relies on its source. In the case of pop music, this meant a song distributed by a major label possessed an inherent credibility and prestige in a way something sung by a busker in a train station did not. What the existence of YouTube and TikTok meant was the buskers and the artists signed to the labels suddenly began to appear on the same medium, thus at some level gaining some sort of equivalency. On TikTok, it’s all the same screen.
Ms Eilish and her label has been adept at using the socials as tool for this and that so presumably neither object to the existence or the technology of the sites (although her label (Universal Music) has only recently settled its dispute with TikTok over the revenue sharing) but there will be an understanding that while there’s now no alternative to in a sense sharing the digital space and letting the people choose, that doesn’t mean she’ll be happy about being in the same photo frame when the trophies are handed out. Clearly, there are stars and there are TikTokers and while the latter can (and have) become the former, there are barriers not all can cross.
1966 Jaguar Mark X 4.2 (left), 1968 Dodge Charger RT 440 (centre) and 1981 Mercedes-Benz 500 SLC (right). Only the Americans called the shared tachometer/clock a “Tic-Toc Tach”.
Jaguar had long been locating a small clock at the bottom of the tachometer but in 1963 began to move the device to the centre of the dashboard, phasing in the change as models were updated or replaced. By 1968 the horological shift was almost complete (only the last of the Mark II (now known as 240, 340 & Daimler V8 250) models still with the shared dial) and it was then Chrysler adopted the idea although, with a flair the British never showed, they called it the "Tic-Toc-Tachometer. Popularly known as the “Tic-Toc Tach”, it was also used by other US manufacturers during the era, the attraction being an economical use of dash space, the clock fitting in a space at the centre of the tachometer dial which would otherwise be unused. Mercedes-Benz picked up the concept in 1971 when the 350 SL (R107) was introduced and it spread throughout the range, universal after 1981 when production of the 600 (W100) ended; Mercedes-Benz would for decades use the shared instrument. A tachometer (often called a “rev counter”) is a device for measuring the revolutions per minute (RPMs) of a revolving shaft such as the crankshaft of an internal combustion engine (ICE) (thus determining the “engine speed”). The construct was tacho- (an alternative form of tachy-, from the Ancient Greek ταχύς (takhús) (rapid) + meter (the suffix from the Ancient Greek μέτρον (métron) (measure) used to form the names of measuring devices).
Conventions in English and Ablaut Reduplication
In 2016, the BBC explained why we always say “tick tock” rather than “tock-tic” although, based on the ticking of the clocks at the time the phrase originated, there would seem to be no objective reasons why one would prevail over the other but the “rule” can be constructed thus: “If there are three words then the order has to go I, A, O. If there are two words then the first is I and the second is either A or O which is why we enjoy mish-mash, chit-chat, clip-clop, dilly-dally, shilly-shally, tip-top, hip-hop, flip-flop, tic tac, sing song, ding dong, King Kong & ping pong. Obviously, the “rule” is unwritten so may be better thought a convention such as the one which dictates why the words in “Little Red Riding Hood” appear in the familiar order; there the convention specifies that in English, adjectives run in the textual string: opinion; size; age; shape; colour; origin; material; purpose noun. Thus there are “little green men” but no “green little men” and if “big bad wolf” is cited as a violation of the required “opinion (bad); size (big); noun (wolf)” wolf, that’s because the I-A-O convention prevails, something the BBC explains with a number of examples, concluding “Maybe the I, A, O sequence just sounds more pleasing to the ear.”, a significant factor in the evolution of much that is modern English (although that hardly accounts for the enduring affection some have for proscribing the split infinitive, something which really has no rational basis in English, ancient or modern. All this is drawn from what is in structural linguistics called “Ablaut Reduplication” (the first vowel is almost always a high vowel and the reduplicated vowel is a low vowel) but, being English, “there are exceptions” so the pragmatic “more pleasing to the ear” may be helpful in general conversation.
Lindsay Lohan announces she is now a Tiktoker.
Rolls-Royce, the Ford LTD and NVH
The “tick-tocking” sound of a clock was for some years a feature of the advertising campaigns of the Rolls-Royce Motor Company, the hook being that: “At 60 mph (100 km/h) the loudest noise in a Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock”. Under ideal conditions, that was apparently true but given electric clocks can be engineered to function silently, the conclusion was the company fitted time-pieces which made a deliberately loud “tick-tock” sound, just to ensure the claims were true. They certainly were, by the standards of the time, very quiet vehicles but in the US, Ford decided they could mass-produce something quieter still and at the fraction of the cost. Thus the 1965 Ford LTD, a blinged-up Ford (intruding into the market segment the corporation had previously allocated to the companion Mercury brand), advertised as: “Quieter than a Rolls-Royce”. Just to ensure this wasn’t dismissed as mere puffery, Ford had an independent acoustic engineering company conduct tests and gleefully published the results, confirming what the decibel (dB) meters recorded. Sure enough, a 1965 Ford LTD was quieter than a 1965 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III. Notably, while Rolls-Royce offered only one mechanical configuration while the Ford was tested only when fitted with the mild-mannered 289 cubic inch (4.7 litre) V8; had the procedure included another variation on the full-size line which used the 427 (7.0) V8, the results would have been different, the raucous 427 having many charms but they didn’t include unobtrusiveness.
Ford did deserve some credit for what was achieved in 1965 because it wasn’t just a matter of added sound insulation. The previous models had a good reputation for handling and durability but couldn’t match the smoothness of the competitive Chevrolets so within Ford a department dedicated to what came to be called HVH (Noise, Vibration & Harshness) was created and this team cooperated in what would now be understood as a “multi-disciplinary” effort, working with body engineers and suspension designers to ensure all components worked in harmony to minimize NVH. What emerged was a BoF (Body on Frame) platform, a surprise to some as the industry trend had been towards unitary construction to ensure the stiffest possible structure but the combination of the frame’s rubber body-mounts, robust torque boxes and a new, compliant, coil rear suspension delivered what was acknowledged as the industry’s quietest, smoothest ride. Ford didn’t mention the tick-tock of the clock.
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