TikTok continues to be on shaky floor in america. Earlier this month, the Supreme Courtroom upheld a regulation handed by Congress final yr that required a ban of the Chinese language-owned app until it was offered to a government-approved purchaser.
Hours earlier than the regulation took impact, TikTok went darkish briefly, then flickered again to life when President Trump, a day earlier than his inauguration, indicated assist for the app. He then signed an govt order stalling the ban for 75 days.
Whether or not the app will disappear for good is unclear, however within the meantime, listed below are 4 true-crime tales related to TikTok — the most downloaded app in america and the world in 2020, 2021 and 2022 — that captured broader consideration.
It’s after all no secret that the shiny dance movies which have populated TikTok since its inception, together with a lot on-line content material, is extra fantasy than actuality. However that’s little consolation to the revelations uncovered on this 2024 Netflix sequence.
“Dancing for the Satan” primarily spends time with dancers who have been managed by the expertise firm 7M Movies and have been members of Shekinah Church — each entities based and led by Pastor Robert Shinn — in addition to determined relations of these nonetheless concerned with 7M. These households declare that their family members are basically trapped.
Shinn created 7M to seemingly assist TikTok dancers and aspiring influencers elevate their standing. The dancers we hear from declare that 7M is a cult and that Shinn is an abusive cult chief. Accusations embrace these of fraud, labor violations, extortion, grooming and assault. (Shinn didn’t take part within the sequence and denies wrongdoing.)
“Dancing for the Satan” falls right into a class of true crime that does much less wanting again and as a substitute paperwork a state of affairs that continues to unfold. Our movie critic recommended the three-part sequence for not speeding the narrative, calling it “daring, instructive, considerate and transferring.”
Documentary movie
Final yr I wrote about how true-crime storytellers used to have little in the way in which of real-time first-person footage to depend on. Now, as a lot of our every day lives are documented, the style has remodeled. And there has by no means fairly been a path of damning video and audio proof as there was with this case — instructed on this 2024 Peacock documentary — concerning the 2021 murders of Ana Abulaban and Rayburn Barron, who have been killed by Ana’s estranged husband, Ali Abulaban.
Ali was a TikTok star who, below the username JinnKid, gained prominence and tens of millions of followers together with his comedic Skyrim and “Scarface” impressions. He recorded a lot of his life on his cellphone, and as his and Ana’s marriage unraveled, he broadcast their fights reside, dissolving the right picture they’d projected on-line.
He even recorded audio in the course of the second of the murders, and neighbors’ doorbell cameras of their luxurious San Diego high-rise captured the aftermath.
It is a story of home violence, jealousy and dependancy, and of how a fixation on social-media fame can warp actuality past restore.
Documentary Sequence
Right here we find out about Sania Khan, a photographer and Pakistani American influencer whose TikTok following swelled when she began to talk candidly about her cut up from her husband, Raheel Ahmad, after a tumultuous and abusive marriage.
Confessional-type content material is all over the place on social media, however for Khan, airing out her personal life was significantly courageous due to the conservative South Asian and Muslim communities of which she was half — cultures that anticipate ladies to take care of the established order and put their household’s fame first.
Whereas scores of ladies celebrated her candor and commiserated along with her ache within the feedback, there was additionally a brutal backlash from those that thought her posts have been shameful, and proceeded to harass, bully and threaten her.
When she was simply hours from beginning a brand new chapter in her life, the worst occurred.
This episode is especially poignant as a result of Khan’s story is essentially instructed by means of her closest associates, who concentrate on her effervescent character and her mission to modernize her tradition, push previous taboos and reclaim her identification.
Digital Sequence
When Tareasa Johnson, identified on-line as Reesa Teesa, posted a 50-part sequence to her TikTok web page final yr recounting her doomed marriage to her ex-husband — a drama that features claims of fraud, forgery and manipulation — the web was riveted. Because the story unfurled, each revelation extra stunning than the final, she gained a whole bunch of tens of millions of views.
All in, the movies clock in at over six hours, however they’re price it. It’s additionally a refreshing approach to expertise tales like these: stripped down, minimally produced and instructed straight from the particular person at its heart.
The sequence might finally vanish for American customers together with the app. However when you miss it, Natasha Rothwell (“The White Lotus”) is growing a tv adaptation of the saga.