Tiktok stays on shaky land in the United States. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court confirmed a law last year by the congress that demanded a ban on the app in Chinese, unless it was sold to a buyer approved by the government.
Hours before the law came into force, Tiktok briefly became dark and then flickered back to life when President Trump, one day before his inauguration, indicated the support for the app. He then signed an executive order that the ban gets stuck for 75 days.
Whether the app will disappear forever is unclear, but in the meantime four real crime stories are associated with Tiktok-De Most Downloaded App in the United States and the world in 2020, 2021 and 2022 and 2022 that attracted wider attention.
It is of course no secret that the shiny dance videos that have populated Tiktok since its foundation, along with a lot of online content, is more imagination than reality. But that is little comfort for the revelations that were discovered in this 2024 Netflix series.
“Dancing for the Devil” spends time mainly with dancers managed by the Talent Company 7M films and were members of the Shekinah Church – both entities founded and led by pastor Robert Shinn – as well as desperate relatives of those still involved at 7m. These families claim that their loved ones are essentially trapped.
Shinn created 7m to help Tiktok dancers and aspiring influencers increase their status. The dancers we hear from claiming that 7m is a cult and that Shinn is an offensive cult leader. Accusations include those of fraud, employment, extortion, care and abuse. (Shinn did not participate in the series and denies misconduct.)
“Dancing for the Devil” falls into a category of real crime that looks back less and, instead, documents a situation that continues to unfold. Our film critic praised the three -part series for not hurrying the story and called it 'daring, instructive, thoughtful and moving'.
Documentary film
Last year I wrote about how stories from the real crime used to have few real-time first-person images to trust. Now, because a lot of our daily lives has been documented, the genre has been transformed. And there has never been a trail of damn video and audio evidence, as there was with this case – told in this Peacock documentary from 2024 – about the murders in 2021 by Ana Abulaban and Rayburn Barron, who were killed by Ana's alienated husband, Ali Abulaban.
Ali was a Tiktok star who, under the username Jinnkid, became known and millions of followers with his comic Skyrim and “Scarface” impressions. He recorded much of his life on his phone, and while the marriage of him and Ana was unraveled, he sent their fights live and solves the perfect image that they had projected online.
He even recorded audio during the moment of the murders, and Burendeurbell cameras in their luxury San Diego High-Rise won the aftermath.
This is a story of domestic violence, jealousy and addiction, and about how a fixation on the familiarity of social media can shrink reality than recovery.
Documentary
Every episode of this research discharge series, which made his debut last year and Streamt at Max and Hulu, investigates another crime that is connected to the lower abdomen of social media.
Here we learn about Sania Khan, a photographer and Pakistani American influencer whose ticks followed swollen when she started to speak frankly about her split from her husband, Raheel Ahmad, after a tumultuous and offensive marriage.
Confessional-Type content is everywhere on social media, but for khan, airing out her private life was particularly good because of the conservative South Asian and muslim communities of which she was part-cultures that expect women to maintain the status quo and their family's Reputation first.
While dozens of women celebrated her frankness and celebrated her pain with her pain in the comments, there was also a brutal recoil from those who thought her posts were embarrassing and proceeded to harass, bully and threaten.
When she was only a few hours from starting a new chapter in her life, the worst happened.
This episode is particularly moving because Khan's story is largely told by her best friends, who focus on her bustling personality and her mission to modernize her culture, express taboos and to recover her identity.
Digital series
When Tareasa Johnson, known online as Reesa Teesa, posted a 50-part series on her Tiktok page last year and told her doomed marriage with her ex-man-a drama that claims of fraud, falsification and manipulation of the internet . While the story unfolded, every revelation got shocking than the previous one, she got hundreds of millions of views.
Everything in, the videos clocks in more than six hours, but they are worth it. It is also a refreshing way to experience such stories: undressed, minimally produced and directly told of the person in the middle.
The series could eventually disappear for American users together with the app. But if you miss it, Natasha Rothwell (“The White Lotus”) develops a television adjustment of the Saga.
