The TikTokers Making Fan Edits of Everything
Aesthetic “edits of things that shouldn’t have edits” — like surgeries, appliances, and instructional videos — are popping up on TikTok.
Fan edits — or fancams, as they are commonly known — are short edited videos created by fans of celebrities to show their support for them. They’re very visually and audibly captivating, using transitions, filters, and either relaxing or upbeat music.
Fancams are often made by “stan” communities of artists such as K-pop band BTS or Ariana Grande and of YouTubers and other influencers. They went mainstream after one of actor Timothee Chalamet went viral on TikTok, gaining close to 40 million views. People then started to make them of the hacking group Anonymous and specific people at Black Lives Matter protests.
Simultaneously, “aesthetic” content and edits have also grown on TikTok. These are videos of people’s lifestyles — vacations, scenery, food and coffee, etc. — and are edited in a very dreamlike manner, with relaxing music and sparkly filters.
From this has risen a genre of weird edits on TikTok —which turn the mundane and bizarre into perfectly edited and filtered videos. TikTok user @/uwuhoh, whose name is listed as Catherine on her profile, is perhaps the most popular creator of these kinds of videos. Some of her most popular videos are school edits, of things such as fire drills or the Fitnessgram PACER test.
Another popular type of video she makes is of old people doing things.
@/uwuhoh describes her videos as “edits for things that shouldn’t have edits.” She’s made edits of wisdom teeth removal, mylar balloons exploding when touching power lines, mail delivery, the digestive process, airplane safety videos, deforestation, nasal sinus irrigation systems, worms after rain, a lobster tank at Red Lobster, and more. Many of her ideas come from requests she gets in her comments sections.
Another user uploaded a fancam of people getting attacked by geese.
And another edit shows Amish people lifting a barn, set to Lorde’s song “Green Light.”
These edits are sort of a mockery of the traditional “aesthetic” videos, which tell viewers to start romanticizing their lives and caring about the little things. In these videos, the little things are kids in shopping carts, olive oil, and lice.
They also make fun of stan culture and the extraordinary lengths people will go to when obsessing over certain celebrities and making fancams of them.
As is typical with Gen Z absurdist humor, it seems there is no limit to what people want fancams of — recent requests I’ve seen include arson, people drowning, old people falling, birds flying into windows, serial killings, putting fertilizer onto plants, the Nuremberg Trials, a cranberry bog, people having seizures, and celebrities vomiting on stage. Some of @/uwuhoh’s edits have even been removed by TikTok for violating community guidelines, and so she has to be somewhat selective in choosing what edits she will now make. One user commented on one of @/uwuhoh’s edits, “This is so dark…I love it.”
