How to Renovate Your Home for a Billion Children
Viral TikTok home renovation videos, featuring surreal CGI and absurd scenarios, originated from @designer_bob and reflect cultural differences in humor, addressing housing issues through satire from the Chinese platform Bilibili.
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The article explores the phenomenon of bizarre home renovation videos that have gone viral on TikTok, particularly focusing on the character "Little John" and the absurdity of the content. These videos, characterized by surreal CGI and narrated by a robotic voice, often depict extreme home renovations for fictional scenarios, such as a couple with a billion children. The trend began with the TikTok account @designer_bob, which popularized a specific format that quickly attracted millions of views. As the trend evolved, many other accounts adopted similar styles, leading to a proliferation of content that blends irony and absurdity. The videos are largely derived from a Chinese platform called Bilibili, where they are created as satirical commentary on housing issues in cities like Hong Kong. The original creators, known as "Crazy Designer" and "Designer Aunt Wang," produce content that is meant to be humorous and exaggerated, which has been lost in translation for Western audiences. The article concludes that the viral success of these videos is not a marketing ploy but rather a cultural crossover that highlights the absurdity of modern housing challenges.
- Viral home renovation videos on TikTok feature surreal CGI and absurd scenarios.
- The trend originated from the TikTok account @designer_bob, which popularized a specific video format.
- Content is derived from Bilibili, a Chinese platform, where it serves as satirical commentary on housing issues.
- The character "Little John" and similar videos have become memes, reflecting a blend of irony and absurdity.
- The phenomenon illustrates cultural differences in humor and content creation between China and the West.
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9 commentsI spent many years in the early days of social media building: starting at StumbleUpon, working on early Facebook apps, building companies in the space. It always felt that social media was an unstoppable train, but it seems like the benefits of connecting everyone together outweighed the negatives: the constant address book spamming, content designed to be viral rather than informative, etc.
I suppose that's it's really just the distilled, pure dopamine lever part of all the early stuff we built with everything else stripped out. It was always inevitable that the culture of optimization would strip out the humanity, I suppose.
EDIT: The replies to this comment really have an "I'm not addicted, you just don't understand it" vibe.
I've always wanted to try the software, too bad the author never tracked it down.
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