So we’ve talked about what Tik Tok is, what a meme is, and what it is I’m learning in my earlier post. Finally we are combining our knowledge with Tik Tok and our driving question. Our driving question is; how can we use current memes to comment on the the significance and consequences as nationalism around the world? In this case, we decided that Tik Tok counts as a meme sharing platform because our definition of a meme is an idea that spreads from one person to the next. So what exactly did I make?
This uses the “I don’t know” meme. In this video I am showing the scene where a whole bunch of European powers got together and divided up Africa for their own. In history, this was part of the scramble for Africa. I decided that this sound helps show the selfishness that was the Europeans. As you can see there are no Africans at the table joining in the discussion. This was because the Europeans decided that since they are minority, they were automatically less than them. The Europeans saw the resources that were on Africa which was the reason that they colonized it. This Tik Tok shows on of the consequences of nationalism. In the case of Africa, the nationalist Europeans lead to things like slavery, racism, civil disorder, and has resulted in the control over Africa to last even until today. However, unlike in the past Africa is controlled more politically rather than with military force. The person who is standing with the map is Otto Van Bismarck. He was the German Chancellor in 1884 and the one who gathered the European powers in the first place.
Add second video
Since I showed the negative consequences in the first Tik Tok I decided that this time I wanted to show the positive consequences of nationalism. This time I used the “This is America” sound. I used this sound to show people celebrating their culture, and their nation. The positive effects of nationalism revolves around the sense of belonging and pride in your nation. When you take that pride too far and start seeing others as inferior is when things go south. In this Tik Tok I wanted to show that nationalism isn’t all bad and that there are many examples of people being respectful of others and recognizing them as a nation.
Finally my third Tik Tok
For this last Tik Tok (click here for sound) I decided that I wanted to change things up a little more and make a Tik Tok using drawings. Since the other 2 Tik Toks that I made were about the good and bad of nationalism, I thought that I would put both into this last one. I thought that rather than creating a video with people moving about, the last one would be still drawing where people could interpret the meaning on their own. I used a lot of the transitions making this video. Using the effects in Tik Tok helped making the overall video look better.