It's October 3, an ordinary fall day forever immortalized in the movie Mean Girls. However, Paramount is the latest name scratched into every cinephile's burn book.
Why? In a not-so-fetch marketing move, the media company just uploaded the entirety of Mean Girls to TikTok — broken up into 23 clips — in celebration of "Mean Girls Day." Now fans can watch the movie for free on the official Mean Girls TikTok account or they can wait for it to cross their FYPs.
For many, watching a movie in bite-sized videos or out of context on their FYP is sacrilegious, but this way of consuming media is not uncommon on TikTok. Pirated clips thrive on the platform. Accounts post movies and television shows in short sequential videos. They often don't specify the movie or show in the caption to avoid being taken down due to copyright, relying on the algorithm to reach users. Once someone's FYP serves them a clip they can either wait for more to appear or hunt down the rest of the program.
This chaotic way of watching a movie is popular with a subset of users. Fans told the Wall Street Journal that they like how they don't have to search for what to watch — the algorithm just serves it to them. Meanwhile, the community aspect of the comments section appeals to others, according to Dazed.
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Paramount's move to post Mean Girls on TikTok meets these fans where they are and legitimizes this form of short-form consumption. Peacock has also dipped its toes into posting full episodes of Killing It and Love Island USA to TikTok. If this continues, it will likely have other industry implications amid the ongoing SAG-AFSTRA strike and the monthlong writers' strike. One Writers Guild of America West member, April Wolfe, wrote on Twitter: "So what are the residuals for this?" in response to the Mean Girls news.
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It's only a matter of time before the next beloved movie is turned into TikTok fodder.
