25: A Controversial Viral Russian MMA Fight and Garden Updates
VICE's harmful reporting, plus a rat eating peas!
Welcome to NS 25!
This week involved some TikTok app updates including a new AI voice and a 3 minute time limit for videos.
To keep up with Night School updates or to ask questions, feel free to reach out via Twitter or email: angela.shier@gmail.com.
A big thank you to Meredith Sampson!
Garden Updates
Before I feature content from this week, I have an update on The Garden. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I covered it a couple months ago here and I recommend checking out Emily Louise’s video about it on YouTube.
SO the VICE documentary dropped and it is disappointing to say the least. They inaccurately reported what actually happened between concerned TikTok creators and those promoting The Garden. It blamed death threats and the involvement of authorities on those who were simply addressing problematic behavior of The Garden and warning people about visiting. The documentary irresponsibly led to harassment toward these creators while omitting mention of those, specifically @bookofedith, who did cause harm by scamming viewers and calling ICE & FBI on members of The Garden. It is inexcusable for VICE to have painted The Garden in a relatively positive light without actually addressing the real safety concerns. People of color living at The Garden were featured minimally in the documentary, but a clip of Rel (who was involved in the cat thing) was included where she literally says that it is racist for people to call out her white privilege and problematic behavior. It’s not. Reverse racism is a myth.
It was lazy reporting. I am on discord servers with people mentioned in the documentary, and witnessed them coming to the aid of The Garden’s TikTokers to help protect them from harassment from the general TikTok public. They also actively made content condemning calling authorities on the individuals and organization of The Garden. While I understand it can be difficult to incorporate every element of a fast-moving situation into long-form media, but these events happened well over a month ago. It is lazy and harmful for VICE to not have included at least a note about the events that followed the initial viral moments on TikTok.
Hasbulla Magomedov vs. Abdu Rozik
I never expected to end up researching Russian MMA fighting but here we are!
A friend of mine alerted me to a fight between Hasbulla Magomedov vs Abdu Rozik. It was apparently organized by MMA fighter, Asxab Tamaev, and went viral on social media. Hasbulla Magomedov is a blogger and is also known as “Mini Khabib” on social media. Abdu Roznik is a Russian singer and currently holds the record for being the shortest singer in the world. They both have a growth disorder.
Russia’s Dwarf Athletic Association criticized social media interest around the fight as unethical as it is largely made up of mockery and disrespect towards the Paralympic community. Read more about it here.
Moving onto the content itself, this was the first video I saw, it features Hasbulla:
Most of the content reposted across TikTok is from this YouTube video and their respective Instagram accounts:
A Magic Carpet Ride
A New AI Voice on TikTok
So voice actress Bev Standing sued TikTok for using her voice without permission for the text-to-speech feature. The result of the feature was a robotic voice that creators used to narrate their content. Text-to-speech features provide accessibility to creating and viewing content. There is also a humorous appeal and to the feature in mispronunciations, manipulating text to create strange sounds, etc. The updated voice is much more upbeat, and creators have been adjusting to the change.
Below are videos of people saying goodbye to the old voice and showing off that they still have it from refusing to update their app.
This is the new voice:
Damn Ass Rock Energy
The following two videos reminded me of the energy of one of my favorite viral videos from several years ago: Damn Ass Rock.
Rat & Peas
Monkey Locket
I am inspired to put a strange photo in a locket after watching this video:
Before you go, here’s Juan…
Thank you for reading! See y’all next week.