Billie Eilish Sparks a TikTok Debate at the People’s Choice Awards 2024

What function do content material creators have at award reveals, just like the Folks’s Selection Awards? In line with the “What Was I Made For” singer, none.

TikTok stars are in all places lately, and never everyone seems to be thrilled about it. Working example: Billie Eilish at the People’s Choice Awards 2024. On February 18, the singer was seen chatting with Kylie Minogue whereas on the annual awards present. But it surely wasn’t simply two icons chatting about their music, Eilish — who took house the award for The TV Performance of the Year for her function in Swarm — was caught lamenting over the quantity of TikTok creators on the occasion, seemingly telling Minogue: “There’s so many TikTok-ers right here.” The singer regarded less-than-impressed.

@brycehall #stitch with @centennialworld ♬ original sound – Bryce Hall

Whereas the second might have been seemingly harmless, among the aforementioned TikTok creators didn’t assume so — they usually have been pissed. The day after the present, content material creator Bryce Corridor responded to Eilish’s remark in, what else, a TikTok. Within the video, Corridor sarcastically apologized for not “bowing down” to the singer on the occasion and knowledgeable Eilish that Corridor, alongside fellow creators like Chris Olsen, Alix Earle, and James Charles, have been invited to the occasion by the Folks’s Selection Awardsorganizers. Corridor wrapped up his video by telling Eilish that as a fan, “Now I don’t assume I can renegade to any of your songs anymore. So thanks for taking out all my content material.” So yeah, not happy to say the least.

Whereas the Eilish/TikTok-er feud will almost definitely blow over by the point the following viral pattern comes round, the Billie Eilish Folks’s Selection Awards remark brings up an fascinating debate over the function TikTok creators have at awards reveals basically, and if they need to even be there in any respect. Think about the next.

TikTok stars are the brand new period of leisure

In 2024, the fact is that the entertainment industry has been taken over by social media stars, particularly TikTok. This isn’t a brand new phenomenon. Earlier than TikTok, there was YouTube, with now mainstream stars like Canadian (and former FASHION cover star) Lilly Singh and Emma Chamberlain getting their begin and constructing their fanbases on these platforms. Since welcoming followers into their lives through YouTube movies within the mid 2010s, each Singh and Chamberlain have gone on to amass thousands and thousands of followers, branching out from their preliminary video content material to the mainstream, changing into history-making late night TV hosts and launching coffee empires, respectively.

In the identical means the Kardashians crossed leisure boundaries, ushering in actuality stars as the brand new sort of superstar, Youtube, Instagram, and now TikTok content material creators have began to do the identical. We’ve seen this with OG creator Addison Rae, who used her TikTok superstar to launch a beauty brand, make a foray into appearing with He’s All That, and launch a (type of profitable, a minimum of catchy) music profession. Because the highest grossing app in 2023, TikTok has over 1.5 billion active users a month, many of them from Gen Z, that means that customers are turning to the app for each a part of their every day lives; style recommendation, cooking tutorials, and leisure.

On this means, exhibiting up at awards reveals just like the Folks’s Selection Awards is sensible for these content material creators. They’re the leisure — and the folks — that mainstream audiences flip to. In lots of circumstances, by views, likes, and shares, they are the folks’s decisions. However that doesn’t imply that we will’t even be vital of the function TikTok and its prominence within the leisure business does play, or that we even have to essentially prefer it.

However virality comes with downsides

Whereas content material creators have develop into extra aligned with mainstream celebs over the previous a number of years, there are some methods wherein they differ, particularly on the subject of visibility and the necessity for it. Versus a conventional Hollywood celeb like Selena Gomez or Dakota Johnson, who worth privateness off-screen, the entire thought behind TikTok content material creators and what have propelled them to stardom is the very reverse, the truth that they’re scarily unfiltered. They should be, as a result of their livelihoods — and virality — rely on it. Which might add a stage of invasiveness and surveillance into these awards reveals that didn’t exist earlier than, with moments captured and shared for viral views. And this continues even after the present is over.

@oliveluvsyoux100 The best way hes distracted trying in her eyes 🥹 #kyliejenner #timotheechalamet #goldenglobes ♬ My Love Mine All Mine – Mitski

As a result of one other factor audiences have seen on the rise this awards season are lip studying movies, with TikTok creators taking snippets of personal convos between celebs, on the Grammys,  entrance row at Trend Week, on the sidelines of football games, and on the Golden Globes and incessantly dissecting them — then sharing their findings with actually everybody on the web. Like many issues, it began with the Kardashians. In the course of the January seventh stream of the 81st Golden Globe Awards, a video of couple Kylie Jenner and Timothée Chalamet intimately chatting went viral, with tons of of individuals trying to find out what 2023’s most shocking couple discuss on the down-low. (The precise convo remains to be TBD, starting from the younger duo cooing “I love you” to one another, to Jenner complimenting Chalamet’s necklace. Ah, younger love).

Later that very same night time, lip readers of TikTok struck as soon as once more when BFFs Selena Gomez, Taylor Swift, and Keleigh Teller have been caught seemingly gossiping on digicam about Jenner and Chalamet, with many on the social media app saying Gomez was denied a photograph with Chalamet by his girlfriend. It was, to say the least, a frenzy.

@jessweslie #greenscreen #kyliejenner #timotheechalamet #kyliejennertimotheechalamet #selenagomez #goldenglobes #goldenglobes2024 #fyp ♬ original sound – Jessica Weslie Arena

And whereas I’m all for some good, grade A celeb gossip like this Billie Eilish Folks’s Selection Awards drama (blind objects are my life’s blood), there’s one thing that feels slightly icky about taking tangible personal moments and conversations between celebs and blasting them everywhere in the web. Even when there’s no hurt initially meant by it,  it inevitably results in stated celebs having to develop into additional vigilant and guarded. For the reason that Golden Globes debacle, celebs like Swift and even Billie Eilish have taken to shielding their mouths whereas on digicam or in pictures speaking to folks round them, reinforcing the concept and feeling that simply because these persons are celebrities they’re not allowed an inkling of privateness. Which is a fallacy I assumed we obtained over a very long time in the past.

No matter whether or not or not TikTok-ers pop up on the Oscars or any and all awards reveals to come back, one factor’s for positive — they’re in all probability right here to remain.