If you’ve been on TikTok at any point in the past six months, chances are you’ve stumbled across them, as I first did during a fairly routine doomscroll one night this summer. For me it started with two videos somewhat incongruously tagged #homeremodeling and #housedesign. One of them featured a CGI man summoning a baby phoenix outside of a tree that he planned to turn into an apartment.
Then a robotic AI voice started to narrate how the CGI man, identified as “Little John,” was going to build it. Over the next 90 seconds, Little John transformed the tree into a maniacally space-efficient luxury unit in an AI-generated ballet of flying galvanized square steel, ecofriendly wood veneer, and expansion screws. The other video, featuring nearly identical CGI and the same hypnotically flat AI narrator, followed the story of a couple with a billion children that, like Little John, decided it was time to improve their home.
And those two videos were only the tip of the galvanized steel iceberg. WTF We looked into it so you don't have to. There are hundreds of accounts posting these videos to TikTok right now, and they’ve become immensely popular, racking up millions of views.
Even the “character” of Little John has become a meme of his own, with people making skits where they pretend to be him. The videos struck me as a fascinating case study of how TikTok trends have evolved—or rather devolved—over time. What was once an app full of human beings making content in c.