Why is Project X the latest obsession of TikTok teens?

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When it comes to dissecting the myriad ways each of us is tracked and profiled using technology, the media is itself compromised. Case in point: an Australian researcher published a fascinating paper earlier this year that Australia’s mainstream media probably wasn’t too keen on covering.

UNSW Dr Katharine Kemp presented “How to Track Consumers Who Don’t Want to be Tracked: Examples from Australia’s Largest Media Companies and their Suppliers” at the ACCC’s National Consumer Congress. It’s a short, accessible paper that lays out how Australia’s biggest media companies talk out of both sides of their mouth when it comes to collecting data on their audience.

On one hand, Dr Kemp writes, companies like Nine, News Corp and Seven West Media downplay how they track and profile their audiences when speaking to them, because surveillance is not a particularly popular concept. On the other hand, the same companies brag about just how powerful and wide-reaching their data operations are in trade publications — having created tens of millions of profiles of users between them. Dr Kemp goes so far as to suggest that these companies may be breaching consumer law with how they use data they glean from their audiences. All three companies denied to Mi3 that their practices have broken any laws.

It would be easy for me, a writer for an independent media outlet, to have a little kick at the Lame Stream Media and leave it at that — Crikey doesn’t have the same expansive ad arm — but we’re not completely innocent either.

When the news media bargaining code negotiations were happening, Crikey’s parent company, Private Media, was one of the early Australian media companies who signed deals with Google and Meta (then Facebook). Let’s not even mention the deep, bitter dependency that media companies still have on these tech platforms as a way of reaching and observing audiences. (The Markup created a fun tool called Blacklight that reveals what user-tracking technologies are being used on any website — try it on your favourite online publication!)

I’m not writing this to claim all media is hopelessly biased. Personally, the fact Meta and Google are underwriting at least part of my salary directly has never stopped me from criticising them; plus there is an endless supply of sharp tech reporting from others in similar positions. Nor am I parroting the We Should Improve Society Somewhat meme to say that this involvement with surveillance capitalism disqualifies media from prosecuting the case against its harms. Almost everyone is helplessly entangled with these companies, so excluding them would be self-defeating.

But the eggheads in Silicon Valley aren’t the only people who are building up expansive tracking operations. They also aren’t doing it on their own, either. If we are to examine and even push back against the ubiquitous and normalised data collection practices, perhaps we should start by looking first at home.

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Content Corner

Dear parents, I write with troubling news. TikTok-crazed teens are throwing raucous parties, destroying property, and even consuming drugs and alcohol. If you are planning on leaving your child alone for a weekend away, be aware! Regards, your friendly narc journalist.

I kid! Teens aren’t throwing parties — at least yet. Australian TikTok accounts have popped up promoting “Project X” parties, named after the 2012 film that shows a couple of kids throwing a house party that grows out of control. These accounts typically post videos using audio from the movie, along with videos showing someone zooming in on an area of Google Maps to show either the location of a party or where they would like to host one.

As far as I can tell, none of these parties promised in the recent wave of this trend have actually happened. But the hype around something happening is enough to inspire more and more. I’ve seen videos with thousands of interactions that are ostensibly for organising events from places as big as Sydney to as niche as Innisfail, Queensland.

I have suspicions why a ten-year-old movie is bubbling up now as a TikTok trend. The original movie just came back to Netflix at the start of this month. One of the film’s actors, Miles Teller, has just co-starred with Tom Cruise in one of the biggest films of 2022, Top Gun: Maverick. Also, “Project X” party trends seem to just pop up every now and again.

From flash mobs and planking to Adrian’s Kickback and attending Minions showings in suits, internet trends have always intruded into the physical world. It’s fitting that the “Project X” parties revive an old piece of culture for the latest iteration of this phenomenon.