Teenagers in TikTok are obsessed with “criminal spirits.” They can replace TV fandom forever

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One of the first “Criminal Minds” videos that Joselyn Martinez posted on TikTok arrives at a scene in which actor Matthew Gray Gubler seems to break the character. She sought percentage moment of laughter, not knowing how many others had noticed.

“I published it and it exploded,” Martinez said of the video, which has recorded more than 814,000 perspectives since it was published on the social video app. “And I realized that there are many other people in the series. I had no idea.”

Since then, the 18-year-old has targeted her TikTok account for “Criminal Minds” content, thus fitting a component of the program’s developing fandom into the platform, which is still available to users despite President Donald Trump’s release from an executive. previous order this month prohibiting its China-based parent company, ByteDance, from entering into trade agreements with other U.S. corporations, Array, which raises national security concerns.

Here we are just talking about informal enthusiasts: videos marked with the hashtag #crookminds have been viewed more than 1.5 billion times in TikTok, more than 10 times the content posted under hashtags related to other popular criminal procedures such as “Law – Order : Array SVU, “CSI” and “NCIS”.. Combined.

But the perception of teens and young adults who create and share virtual content about a CBS offender procedure created in 2005 should not be considered a fun novelty. “Criminal Minds” TikTok also offers a surprising perspective on TV streaming and the social future.

A key detail is the long and continuous drag: the series, which follows special agents of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit and his paintings investigating crimes and profile the serial killers, concluded its 15-season series before this year, its first 12 seasons are for being broadcast on Netflix and continues to attract new fans. (Of course, the vagaries of broadcast rights agreements can also create frustrations that physical media, such as DVD sets, do not create. A Facebook organization committed to discussing what’s on Netflix offers a thread of approximately 250 comments on why “Criminal Minds” max Recent seasons have not yet been added to the platform catalog).

In turn, TikTok extends the life of the series by keeping the audience involved, especially in multiple views, and drawing the attention of a potential new audience: TikTok’s maximum viral messages are peppered with comments from users asking what screen the clips are from.

Caitlin White, 15, said he came through “Criminal Minds” on Netflix and saw it after hearing positive word-of-mouth reviews. She started looking at the screen a while before the coronavirus stopped and “immediately Array … became completely obsessed.”

“I love characters,” said White, who has since watched all 12 seasons on Netflix. “Before I started watching [Criminal Minds], I started listening to serial killer podcasts and learning about … Psychology. I think the screen had a funny view of my interests.

He learned temporarily of the videos “Criminal Minds” and other young screen enthusiasts on TikTok.

“It’s more common for other people my age to make jokes, make small memes … and they only talk about the series and how much they like to review the episodes,” White said. “He created this massive community, and I think it’s wonderful because other people with similar interests come together. It’s great.”

Among the “Criminal Minds” videos posted on TikTok are those of enthusiasts who react to expressive scenes, parodies and even lip sync. Fans who appreciate Dr. Spencer Reid (played through Gubler), whether by his intellect and charm, are a subgenre of those videos. The creators also act on the audio of the scenes of “Criminal Minds”, or adapt other trending sounds or memes to the characters and scenarios of “Criminal Minds”. The more users interact with videos marked with #criminalminds, the more the app will integrate the videos with this hashtag into their “for You” organized touchdown page.

Eugene Lee, managing director of ChannelMeter, a company that provides analysis and monetization to video creators, described TikTok as “the new water cooler.”

“It’s the new way to communicate about a screen, and if I were a great media company … I’ll make sure that any screen it produces has that nibbling detail that other people can create,” Lee said. “That’s what makes the screen last longer. I think this is the new and genuine marketing approach to any new type of content that is coming.”

Creating and sharing encouraged work through TELEVISION screens has long been a component of fan culture. Fanfictions and fanzines (unofficial stories and fan-created publications) predate the Internet and social media. Technological advances have just helped make fan culture more accessible: now it’s less difficult than ever to locate and percentage fan art, fan videos, GIFs, memes and other content.

Lee explained that one component of TikTok’s appeal is its ease of use: creators record, edit and publish their short videos in the app, and messages can be streamed.

In addition, “TikTok [also did] the verbal exchange content,” Lee said of how the platform encourages engagement. “It’s not just the one who comments, he creates his own video.”

These elements have made TikTok an ideal platform for fandom to thrive, the precise effect on the audience is more difficult to pinpoint. After all, “Criminal Minds” has maintained a consistent and engaged audience for years. A 2016 New York Times assignment ranked drama among the 50 most popular television screens on Facebook. In addition, a 2019 review through USC Annenberg’s Norman Lear Center and futurePerfect found that “Criminal Minds” is one of the few exhibits whose audience crosses political divisions in the United States, meaning it is so popular with liberals, conservatives, and intermediaries.

It is true that widespread home ownership orders designed to curb the spread of COVID-19 have led the public to (re) realize and feed the series as much as social media. Although Netflix only selectively publishes the number of viewers, according to Parrot Analytics, which measures the cross-platform call for television screens, “Criminal Minds” is the 13th most requested series in the United States between July 18 and August 16, hitting it at maximum sense. 0.2% of screens. In addition, the sample of knowledge the United States asks for “criminal minds” has been higher in recent months, with 21.3% more in July than in March. The U.S. asks that the screen be 77% higher in July compared to the same month of 2019.

Like White, Martinez, who remembers seeing revivals of the exhibition with his grandfather as a child, first began to see “Criminal Minds” when state closures began as a reaction to the pandemic. “We have a lot more free time,” he says.

Whatever the explanation for its recent rise, the continued popularity of “Criminal Minds” in the run-up to the 15th anniversary of its creation next month is an example of the streaming price of long-running series like “Seinfeld”, “The Office”, “The Big Bang Theory” and “Friends”, which have unleashed bidding wars as platforms seek to upload fan favorites to their libraries.

Prestige TV and the original programming would possibly motivate more discussion among critics, but those are the only exhibits that can motivate enthusiasts to show their artistic or explicit love. And this mix of sustainability, viewer loyalty and passionate interest is at the heart of the strong commitment that streaming platforms and social media use to measure success.

For his part, Martínez is not intended to prevent the publication of “Criminal Minds” content, nor to take advantage of it as an opportunity to publish reviews and link it with other enthusiasts and creators.

“The funny thing,” he says, “is that I never lack ideas.”

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