Why are people commenting 'story time' and 'crop' on TikTok? An investigation.

TikTok's has been particularly insufferable these days and the comment section isn't often the most pleasant of places.

If you have scrolled your For You Page in the past week, you may have noticed a couple of key phrases pop up over and over again. If you open the comments of a TikTok video from a big creator, you will seecrop, story time, and you don't have to.

Credit: Screenshot: TikTok

Credit: Screenshot: TikTok

The phrases make me want to rip my hair out. I come to TikTok for dumb videos, pop culture discourse, and a nice little recipe suggestion. I expect fun banter when I open the comments. I yearn for the days when I could find these.

Why must we suffer like this?

The comments are so annoying that they are supposed to be. It is a big inside joke made to the videos on the platform, creating an echo chamber of people who keep the comments coming, and a chain of irked users commenting to complain about the comments. We just close the app and log off when our brains are broken. Huh. Maybe these comments are good for us.

Why were these words used for the comment overload trend? It is the latest in a habit that TikTok commenters can not seem to kick.

Credit: Screenshot: TikTok

Credit: Screenshot: TikTok

The trend is a dig towards a piece of actual TikTok comment culture. The two phrases were posted frequently before the meme took off. Users would ask for a crop of the specific image used in the video so they could participate in the trend. There have been so many filter-based trends that this comment had been appearing all over TikTok, enough for a subsect of users to memeify it.

Story time followed a similar path. A large number of videos on TikTok feature someone using an audio trend or just talking to the camera about a crazy situation they may have gone through. To get the attention of the viewer, they usually leave out a few key details or hint at the larger context. Because we all love to take the bait, other users would comment and ask for a longer video to explain the full tale. The phrase was a genius ploy by creators to drive up engagement in the comments and game the algorithm, and it was easy to understand until the meme lords came for it.

The gag is a little harder to find. It doesn't have obvious roots in TikTok-specific culture, but we at Mashable think it's probably from the new Apple emoji drop.

On March 15th, a collection of new emoji were released, which included a lip bite, a disco ball, and a cup that may or may not be blood. If you had updated to the newest version of the app, you could see the emoji, but not the question mark.

Some memer out there created their own version of this and it was a big problem for TikTok. If you really want to get your hands on the emoji, just copy and paste it. We will put it here in this article for you.

How to prevent the dumb spam comments on your own videos

TikTok doesn't seem to have a function that lets you block all of these words from your viewing experience. There are some steps you can take to clean up your comment sections if you don't want to see the junk in your videos on TikTok.

Credit: Screenshot: TikTok

To start filtering your own comment sections, first click on the three bars in the upper right corner of your profile, then tap "Settings and privacy."

Credit: Screenshot: TikTok

Credit: Screenshot: TikTok

Then, tap on the button that says "Privacy," and on the next screen, tap where it says "Comments."

Credit: Screenshot: TikTok

Finally, toggle on the button next to "Filter keywords," and an area to type in any undesired words should pop up. Input the words you'd like to blacklist, and hit enter after each one.

TikTok only blocks 50 words, so if you want to oust any other words, choose wisely.