Grab your virtual surfboards and prepare for a wild ride! In this episode, JJ and Christine navigate social media for sighted people - chat bubbles, profile pics, visual overload, and all. Then, take a deep breath as rapid-fire descriptions carry us across the roiling waters of TikTok. You won’t know what hit you!
For further thoughts on JJ's description of TikTok user (and Canadian Political Leader) Jagmeet Singh, check out our blog: https://talkdescriptiontome.blogspot.com/2020/08/episode-8-tiktok-and-look-of-social.html
Grab your virtual surfboards and prepare for a wild ride! In this episode, JJ and Christine navigate social media for sighted people - chat bubbles, profile pics, visual overload, and all. Then, take a deep breath as rapid-fire descriptions carry us across the roiling waters of TikTok. You won’t know what hit you!
For further thoughts on JJ's description of TikTok user (and Canadian Political Leader) Jagmeet Singh, check out our blog: https://talkdescriptiontome.blogspot.com/2020/08/episode-8-tiktok-and-look-of-social.html
Talk description to me with Christine Malec and JJ hunt.
Christine:Hi, I'm Christine Malec.
JJ:and I'm JJ hunt. This is talk description to me where the visuals of current events and the world around us get hashed out in description-rich conversations.
Christine:Recently, someone mentioned to me, they were describing an image and they said it's like a Facebook chat bubble. And I had to ask her what that meant. And it made me realize that social media is essentially visual. And as a blind person, I'm totally used to interacting with it in the ways that I'm used to interacting with it, which is sort of linear completely voice-based. And so thank goodness we have all these accessibility things in mind and in place to help us navigate that. But social media is essentially visual. And so I wanted to talk about the ways that social media looks when you are a visual user. So a JJ, do you w ant t o just start with chat bubble? What does that, what does that mean?
JJ:Yeah, so a chat bubble is a, is a little cartoon speech bubble. So are you familiar with the basic speech bubble concept from like cartoons and comics and so forth?
Christine:So it's something to come comes out of their mouth and it indicates that they're speaking
JJ:Exactly that's exactly it. And so like in a cartoon setting, it might be like a round bubble with a little, I don't know, let's call it a little dongle coming off of it. That goes leads to a person's mouth, or it leads to a character's head in a cartoon or something. And that's how you know, that that's a person that's speaking and in cartoons and in comic strips and whatnot, they can take on different forms of someone's thinking maybe it's in a cloud shape the speech bubbles in a cloud shape, or if they're yelling, maybe it's in like an exploding star pattern or something. Um, but that basic concept then moved into the social media and the texting world. And that's how, uh, visually the different speakers are noted in a lot of social media platforms. And so what you end up with are these, uh, they're kind of rectangular shapes with rounded corners and a little tiny dongle. And that's the little dongle that's like a, um, you know, it comes to a point to indicate that this is the person that's talking and that basic speech bubble, uh, if you're in a conversation on Twitter or if you're in a conversation in a texting thread, um, your speech bubbles might be a different color than, you then your conversational partner speech bubble. So maybe you're green, they're blue. If there's a group of you, maybe different people will have like, there'll be a series of different colors to differentiate the different speakers. But that is essentially the clearest way visually to note who's talking and who's not.
Christine:So wait on your phone, if you're just texting on what I say to you shows up in a bubble like, is there, there's no picture of me or something and how do you know it's me?
JJ:So essentially you will have, if I'm in a conversation with you on my phone, the way I've got my phone set up is there'll be an icon, your icon, whatever you've selected as your profile picture on, you know, on, on your phone, your device will come up and selected one. Then you get, either a blank or you get the, uh, the egg. The egg was a big thing for a while. Actually I found this really interesting because if you hadn't on some social media platforms selected a picture, you would get the same blank, egg. And I found it really fascinating because some people would be, would say things like never trust an egg. If you've got an egg, it's probably a person who is a bot or something like that. But as someone who's actually got lots of vision impaired friends who are on social media, who like, why am I putting a profile picture up? I had lots of eggs who were friends of mine.
Christine:So wait, I can do this on my phone as well. Like I can go somewhere and choose a representation of myself so that when I text you, that's what you see,
JJ:Depends on the platform. Like if you're using something like WhatsApp, you'll have a little icon for yourself. Not necessarily with straight, with straight texting, but different different platforms have slightly different, different looks for their conversations. But essentially if you and I are having a texting, a messaging chat, I'm possibly going to get a little icon of you up on the top of the screen that, you know, so I can visually see that that's, you know, who I'm talking to, I'm going to get your profile name. And then our conversations are going to unfold in a series of these text bubbles. And my text bubbles might have the little dongle coming off of the right and your text. Bubbles are going to have the dongle coming off of the left. And my texts are going to be in little green, bubbles and yours are going to be in little blue bubbles. And that's how I'll see this conversation unfold. So it's easy to scroll back through and know who said what, when they said it. And they're often, they often have little timestamps in the corner as well. So you can see when, when it happened and it visually breaks down how the conversation unfolded.
Christine:I just have to know now you and I have texted a time or tootwo. How do I show up on your phone? When I texted you?
JJ:Let me see here on our pure texts. There's no, there's no image associated with our, pure texts. I don't think we're on WhatsApp together. Are we?
Christine:No, no.
JJ:WhatsApp is one that has all the images, but I like just scrolling through my images right now. I'll just give you an idea of who's in my images and without indicating who the people are. So I've got one friend, who's got a little profile picture of her with her hair up in a, um, you know, crazy high ponies. And she's got a she's with her kid who's in a costume. And then another friend who's just got a nice photo of her face. I have another friend who has a screaming image of Jean Luc Picard yelling. And then another friend, who's got a picture of a cat, with a monocle and a top hat. And it's like, so the profile picture is sometimes of the person, sometimes of the person's kid. Sometimes it's just a wacky design or a photo that they've pulled offline. It can be anything, but for a lot of us, that's how those, those profile pics, those avatars become how we know each other on, on social media and, and
Christine:So doe it totally mess you up when someone changes their profile picture? For a day or two or a week,
JJ:Absolutely! And some people do it all the time. Like for some people it's like, it's just part of who they are. They change it constantly. It's, it's a picture of the day kind of thing. And then for some of us, it's like, you just put it on there and it's a, it's a brand, right? That's who, that's your brand for me, for example, I've got a picture, it's a closeup. So a lot of these images are cropped in a, in a circle. So it's just a round image. It's a circular image. And so the circle that I've got of me smiling just kind of covers part of my face. So you can see my beard, you can see my smiley eyes and, uh, and it's quite close up, but I, someone pointed out recently that I've had that up there for a long time. My hair is decidedly gray
Christine:Ha ha! Uh huh...
JJ:And it'd be vain or anything. I liked my silver main, but, uh, I, I just haven't bothered, you know?
Christine:It's the other vice the laziness, not the vanity. Exactly. That's, what's winning out here. So walk me through your experience on Facebook. So say you pick up your, whatever, and you're going to stroll through Facebook. Um, uh, you're, you're swiping through images. Give me a, give me a sense of what you would see. Okay. So let's say, say I posted something that didn't have a photo attached to it. It was just text and then some people commented on it. Give me a sense of what that would look like for you visually.
JJ:For me visually. Great. So if I'm on my phone and it is a little bit different desktop mobile tablet phone, it's a little bit different, but let's say phone because that's something most everyone uses these social media platforms on. Right? So, visually I am scrolling. So I'm, you know, flicking my thumb up and I'm scrolling through all of the different posts and each person's post is separated. So it's a, it's a white screen black text, and each post is separated by a horizontal gray line. So you've got each one is separated and then the person's icon is in the upper left, uh, along with, like some kind of title, either their name or the business page or the Facebook group or whatever is there.
Christine:And when you say icon is that their profile picture,
JJ:Right? Their profile pic is up in the, is up in the upper left. That's right. And then after the, the person's name or the business name, then there's the whatever they've posted. So if it's a meme or a photograph that's what's front and center, if it's a, if it's a text based post, so they've, they've got an opinion to share, or they want to say something, you just get like a little paragraph of text and then if there's an image or video or something that's associated with that, it will come after. So you've got, the block of text and then the, and then the photo or the link or whatever. And, and then underneath that, if you open up, if you tap on that post and you want to then read all of the comments that are below, all of those are sorted in this kind of text bubble layout. So you tap on comments and you, and you can open up the whole, uh, the whole piece of text. Cause sometimes it's shortened, it's abbreviated. If it's in a, if it's just as part of the feed and you can then open it up and you get all of the, essentially they look like text bubbles of the comments, one after the other, after the other, after the other, they don't have the little dongle coming off like a speech bubble, but essentially they're the same rounded cornered rectangle. And everyone gets their say, and each person is identified by name and by a profile pic,
Christine:I sometimes see posts and they start with this post has no photo because I want to test whether someone will actually read all the way through it. And those are triggers to me too. Cause it makes me think what's the experience of, of sighted people looking at Facebook because when I'm, when I'm going through Facebook, I'm reading until I get bored and then I flick away. But is it so visual based that if there's no photo, people are instantly bored, what am I, what meaning can I take from posts like that?
JJ:That's there's truth to that. It is such a visual medium that, and you know, a lot of us, that's what, that's, what triggers our interest is images and videos and posts without images or videos have a much lower engagement rate. You know, there are companies that track this businesses that track this. And if you don't have an image associated with your post, whether it's on Facebook or Twitter, you are likely to get a much lower engagement rate.
Christine:Jeez. When you use an emoji, does it get squeezed into font size? So that it's, it takes up the same amount of spaces as a comma, or is it bigger relative to the text?
JJ:Interesting. Yeah. No, it's pretty small. It's pretty small. So if it gets... again they tend to be based on this little circle. So some of them are in a circle. Some of them are just rounded, but they're these tiny little, it is within the line of text. So they're not, they're not huge. They're not, you know, oversized.
Christine:I'd love it to do a whole episode on emojis cause I like them, but there's one that I've, I, I would just focus on. Cause I don't understand it. It's described as face rolling on the floor, laughing. Uh, what does that actually look like
JJ:Face rolling on the floor laughing. So I'm not sure exactly which one it is I can guess, but it's probably, you know, there's the, there's the smiley face. There's the laughy face. There's a laughy face with a little tear and then some of the emojis actually they have a movement, you know, associated with it. So it's an animated emoji. And so there's one that is like a, it's a, it's the face that's laughing, but it's kind and it's, I think it's got a tear in its eye and it's rolling back and forth a little bit. Like it's just rolling on the floor. There's also one, I think there's one, that's a face hugging a heart. Like I wish to give you a hug and that's particularly, you know, poignant in COVID era when none of us can touch each other.
Christine:I had it, uncomfortably drawn to my attention lately that Facebook is for old people. And so I, I approached that, that bit of wisdom with a little hesitation until I started thinking about TikTok, because then I realized, I see references to TikTok. I don't have a clue what it's about. So I guess that does mean Facebook is for old people. So can we talk about TikTok for, for those people like me who are, still, you know, living in a well, what is TikTok?
JJ:Yeah, I am very much the same. So I, I did do some research on I'm not a tech talk user. U m, I know a little bit about it a nd tick tock videos e nded up being shared on other platforms and spoken about i n o ther w ays. So I'm, I had some familiarity with some of the visuals of TikTok. And also of course, because TikTok's in the news with Donald Trump and t he administration threatening to ban TikTok. And I think they've actually started to take some measures to do so. U m, obviously it's pretty huge. So, u h, tick tock is essentially a video sharing service. I t allows users to upload three to 15, second long videos or looped videos that are up to 60 seconds long. And, u h, and it has, it has boomed in an incredible way. It was launched in 2016, it's a Chinese company that runs it and it went worldwide in 2018. And as of this month, as of August, 2020, I read a report that says that they have 1 billion that's billion with a B users worldwide. It's just massive. And the videos that people share are, I mean, they are all over the map, but there are it's, it's still fairly heavy in the lip sinking in the dancing videos, there are comedy videos or quirky talent videos. And then a lot of it like most other social media platforms, a lot of it is based on hashtags, right? So you hashtag, uh, your content so that other people can find it or you, you create or, uh, or involve yourself in hashtags that are doing specific challenges or specific have to have some kind of content, linked, you know, whatever. So hashtags are a big, big, big part of it. And there's also the, the platform has a free catalog of music that you can use in your video. So when you're creating the videos, there's a, there's an editor, that's a part of the platform. So you can add music, add different visuals. So there are filters, you can add different colors and you can add text and you can add emojis and onscreen images right. To your video. So if you just log on to TikTok and you you're new to the program, so their algorithms don't yet understand you, you don't have favorites. You haven't liked certain videos and therefore giving clues as to your tastes and your age and whatnot. It just starts shooting videos at you, random and rapid fire. And they are all over the map. I mean, they're all over the map. And so it's kind of exhilarating and it's fast if you don't like it, just wait six seconds, cause something else is coming right. And it, and it moves quickly. And some of the stuff is kind of funny and some of the stuff is kind of wild and some of the stuff is kind of sexy and some of the stuff is really irritating and it's, it's, it's all over the place. So when I, when I watched these compilation videos, I did get a sense of that, that pace, that frenetic energy that comes from these videos, one after the other, after the other, after the other
Christine:[inaudible] is, as you referenced earlier, it has been in the news as a medium, because some of the things that have happened on there have had more wide reaching effects. And so can you comment on some comments on some of the more striking things that you see?
JJ:Yeah. So there's definitely some, some serious political content and it's left wing and it's right wing. Some of the videos are a political satire. So you've got people who are directly making fun of politicians. And then there, it's also just a way of people for people to connect, right? So there are videos that are funny and silly, but then if you look at the comments below, there are people who are connecting to other likeminded political activists. And so of course the big story with TikTok of late was that tick tock users and K-pop fans, they got together on the social media platforms on TikTok and they essentially conspired to book hundreds of thousands of tickets to Trump's Tulsa rally. And no one in the Trump campaign knew that this was happening. They were very, very clever about it. The K-pop fans and the TikTok users, they booked hundreds of thousands of tickets, Trump and his team thought, wow, it's going to be a massive sellout. They bragged about how many tickets they'd sold. Now you can argue they would have done. So regardless of if anyone had booked these tickets, but they also booked tickets that no one else was able to use. And so sure enough, the Tulsa rally comes up and no one shows no one shows up. And the next day, what I found fascinating was all of the people on Twitter that I follow, because I am not a K-pop fan TikTok user, all of the folks that I'm following were like, wow, I woke up this morning and my teenage son asked if the TikTok protest worked. And like my teenage daughter was, you know, she, and all of her friends booked all these tickets. And so you had journalists whose kids had done this and kept it super quiet. So no one knew about it. And we're talking thousands and thousands of users who managed to keep this a secret.
Christine:When you look at the videos, is it clear that the demographic is definitely young people?
JJ:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, okay, there are, There are people who are not young using the platform, but it is heavily weighted toward young people and frankly, beautiful people.
Christine:Oh!
JJ:Both because, I mean, that's who's using it, but also those are the videos that are going to rise to the top. Right? We like good looking people and the clickbait of having a good looking person, if you're only watching it for 10 seconds, you might as well be watching a good looking person. Right? So those are the videos that rise to the top. And certainly those are the ones that are gonna make it to the compilation videos that, that I was watching. This hashtagging thing is really interesting. So people hashtag challenges all over the place, right? A challenge to this, a challenge for a prank, a challenge for a charity, uh, you know, anything. And some of them are, some of them are kind of silly, like the bottle cap challenge. Did you, have you heard of the bottle cap? It's, it's not new. I think it's, it was a while back, but essentially the idea was you take a bottle, you put the bottle in front of the camera and this is like a, you know, a pop bottle or something like that with a plastic top on it. And you have to try and kick or chop or do something outrageous to open the bottle, to spin the bottle cap off of the bottle. And so people are like, you know, doing ridiculous Kung Fu moves and kicking the top of the bottle off. And sometimes it's like bottle cap challenge fail, where someone does this and the bottle explodes, or they kick the bottle and it hits grandma in the head or, you know, whatever. Right. And sometimes they're like celebrities who do, who participate in these challenges? Because like celebrities are they're involved in this stuff in a big way, will Smith, he's got a major, you know, he is very popular. Kevin Hart is very popular on TikTok. Ryan Reynolds does. I think Ryan Reynolds did of course some, uh, fantastic sarcastic snarky bottle cap challenge thing.
Christine:Does government or mainstream media or larger organizations have a presence on TikTok? Are they adopting it? Or is it just being left to the, to the young people?
JJ:Yeah. Well, some, especially those politicians who want to be connecting with young people, they definitely are on, um, there are some fantastic, I mean, some of it's really cringy, you know, old people trying to be young. Some of it's really, but some of it's like killer. I want to look this one up Jagmeet Singh, did one. Yeah. Oh, so interestingly, I don't know. Uh, I just typed in Jagmeet. I got halfway through JAG and the very first option Jagmeet Singh TikTok. So...
Christine:We should maybe let people know who Jagmeet Singh is, for people who aren't Canadian.
JJ:That's right. So Jagmeet Singh is the leader of one of the three main political parties here in Canada. He is the leader of the NDP and a very good looking young man. A dark complexion, wears a turban. He's got a significant beard that's got some gray right under the lower lip and a bit of gray in the mustache. Very, very handsome man. Usually you don't see him with his hair down. He typically keeps his hair up in the turban. And so for this, for this video, for this TikTok video, it's to the song Flip the Switch, and it starts off with Jagmeet Singh, and his gorgeous drop dead gorgeous wife. She has long dark hair, she's got a red painted lips, you know, perfect eyebrows. She's a beautiful young, dark skinned woman. And so they're standing in a bathroom together at a big round mirror. And this is being filmed by Jagmeet Singh into the mirror. So he is standing behind his wife. His wife is standing at the sink and she's got on a white, like a white men's dress shirt. And she's kind of, you know, adjusting the collar and, rolling up the sleeves and kind of looking at her hair and Jagmeet Singh is standing behind her and he's wearing a black hoodie and his, the hoodie's pulled up over his head. So he's, he's not wearing a turban, but you can't see his hair. He's just in this hoodie and he's filming from behind her. And then at some point in the song, the music says, Flip the Switch. He reaches over, flips the light switch, flips it back on, and now they're reversed. And she is standing behind him in the black hoodie with the hood up, filming. And he is wearing the white dress shirt and his long dark hair, which is as long as hers, which comes down over like, onto his chest is hanging down, long. And he starts grooving. He starts dancing to the music, kinda, you know, shuffling his shoulders back and forth and grooving. Brilliant use of the medium, just brilliant. And right now the most recent version that has been posted, has the message Stay at home friends, at the top of the tweet, which has been added in after the fact in this version has 1.5 million views. And the earlier version, I don't know how many million views that, that first one, which cause it's been posted and re posted a couple of times. So yes, people of different political stripes and corporations have been able to use this effectively. Sometimes it's just like a snippet of a speech or something like that, or an interaction with a, with a voter or a constituent or a, you know, a launch of a new product or an ad or anything like that. Sometimes it's totally cringy and sometimes they nail it.
Christine:JJ, we had talked about maybe, um, you sort of swooping through and describing at something like the pace at which things go by is, is that a possibility?
JJ:I think, yeah, the best way to really get a sense of the experience of flipping through these videos is to, is to try and describe them at pace. Because if you are flipping through these videos, you're going one after the other, after the other, after the other, and there is a randomness to these. So what I've done is I've, I went through a bunch of different compilation videos. I took some favorite ones that seems somewhat representative of the different kinds. Like some of the dance videos, some of the lip sync videos, some of the political stuff, some of the celebrity stuff. And I, and I just wrote, you know, like five or 10 seconds descriptions of each of these videos.
Christine:Okay. I'm taking a deep breath.
JJ:Ya, so I'm just gonna go for it, and I'm going to try not to stop until I'm done. So respond as you will. I'm going to keep talking on this one.
Christine:I'm gonna wait until you're done.
JJ:Alright, here we go. Here's my, here's my version of a, an audio described TikTok: Hashtag show me your walk comedian, Kevin Hart, walking down a wide hallway with two Dobermans to a formal processional soundtrack. He turns to the camera and lip syncs to the song. Walk it, talk it, someone demonstrating how to cut slices in a sponge to clean the tracks on an aluminum window, a black man singing in a microphone while images of George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, and so forth play in the background. A man throws two cell phones into a microwave dials in five minutes, hit start quick, cut to the house. Exploding. A tiny orange kitten climbs up a woman's pant leg, a woman's hands pull on the gauzy wrapping of off a bride and groom wedding cake topper. She begs the universe that it's not ugly. Please don't make it be ugly. Please don't let it be ugly. And then she screams uncontrollably when it's attractive. A woman swings on an indoor hammock until the hammock falls- until the hammock breaks- and she falls to the ground. A woman takes a tape measure to a standing man. First she measures the length of his head. Then the length of his torso, she then pulls the tape, measure back like a pendulum and lets it swing and hit her boyfriend in the crotch. A woman in black- a woman wearing black tights does a hand stand against a wall. Synchronizing her moves to a Shakira song. A woman in yoga pants pretends to pull the plug out of her belly button and allows her puffed up abdomen to deflate. A young Asian couple does a synchronized dance routine inside a horse barn. Their moves include flips, spins and high fives. A heavyset young woman in tight jeans and a white tube top turns to the camera and wipes tears from her eyes. While the song"Know that you are good enough" plays, she covers her mouth to stifle her crying. A young light skinned black woman, Sarah Cooper, lip syncs Donald Trump speeches with exaggerated expressions and literal reenactments. Hashtag AB workout prank. A man sits on the floor with his back straight and his legs stretched out in front of him. A young woman in a tube top and tiny shorts does a straight arm plank in front of him placing her feet over his shoulders. She quickly bends her knees, pulling the man's face into her bum repeatedly. They collapse into a heap laughing.
Christine:Wow. Yeah. Well, I'll take another deep breath.
JJ:Do that for like an hour at a time, two hours at a time, like you just keep going. There's a billion users. The content is endless.
Christine:Have questions, suggestions or things you'd like us to cover. Here's how to find us. Our email address is talk description to me@gmail.com. We're on Twitter at talk description and our Facebook page is unsurprisingly titled talk description to me.