Imagine scrolling through TikTok and pausing on a video of a person casually walking down the street. It may seem normal at first, but then suddenly an image flashes onto the screen. The image shows the person, now face-planted on the concrete sidewalk, and going from fully vertical to abruptly horizontal on the pavement. Throughout the video, the person continues their stroll, however, the flashing image continues to suggest an imminent fate.
This trend, known as “Subtle Foreshadowing” or “Non-Linear Storytelling,” is the newest series of videos that have taken TikTok, and the internet, by storm. With this newest trend, the idea of a fail video has been reinvented.
Since the oldest point of social media, like Vine or YouTube, fail videos have been trending in a multitude of formats. Fail videos would come in the form of compilation videos and shorts, of people falling or inflicting pain on themselves by accident. However, TikTok and countless other social media platforms have taken over as the outlet for this style of video. Although short videos were popular in the past, a new version of them has come to redefine entertainment.
Short-form video content has recently become the way that users take in their media. From the source, TikTok, to Instagram Reels and Youtube Shorts, the format offers a brain-numbing way to mindlessly scroll away. From memes to even broadcasted news, short-form video content offered everything people loved.
In particular, “Subtle Foreshadowing” is so popular, because of short-form video content. This is because of how the meme works in favor of mindless scrolling. Usually, a user expects a straightforward video where the joke or entertainment is quite literally linear. However, this trend is anything but that, so it catches viewers by surprise.
With recent media feeding into dopamine addiction, this trend has tricked people into not expecting the unexpected. Content creators and social media managers may take this as an opportunity to trick their users into spiraling even deeper into their media. It is safe to say that, in the near future similar trends will occur and possibly even redefine memes as we know them.
