TikTok is filled with lots of inside jokes and memes — including a trend where people comment ‘story time’ and ‘crop’ on popular videos. While apps like Facebook and Instagram remain the largest social media apps (and by a considerable margin), TikTok’s crazy popularity is impossible to ignore. Between its growing user base, excellent For You algorithm, and robust filters/editing tools, it’s safe to say that TikTok isn’t going anywhere any time soon.

As with any popular social media platform, new trends, challenges, and memes constantly appear on TikTok. Some of them are self-explanatory. The Thanos snap trend, for example, sees TikTok creators making videos of things being snapped away from them. Other trends — like the brownie recipe one — are total headscratchers. Sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason why something goes viral on TikTok, and that’s part of what makes the app so engaging.

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Such is the case with TikTok’s ‘story time’ and ‘crop’ comments. If you’ve spent any time recently looking at the comments on TikTok videos, you’ve probably noticed people repeatedly commenting ‘story time’ and ‘crop’ with no context. And it doesn’t matter what video you’re watching. It can be a TikTok of someone dancing, performing a comedy skit, showing off a Fortnite win, or anything else. More often than not, the comments section is filled with people saying ‘story time’ and ‘crop’ for no apparent reason.

The Meaning Behind ‘Story Time’ & ‘Crop’ Comments

While the meaning seems to have been lost, the ‘story time’ and ‘crop’ comments can be traced back to specific types of videos. The ‘story time’ comment first appeared on videos of people telling a story about a real (or made up) thing that happened to them. If someone told a story and people wanted a longer explanation of something, viewers would comment ‘story time’ to tell the creator that they wanted to hear more. And the ‘crop’ comment is pretty self-explanatory. If there’s a TikTok video with a funny or strange image in it, commenting ‘crop’ is how you let the creator know that you want a cropped screenshot of that thing.

While those are how the ‘story time’ and ‘crop’ comments started, they seem to have lost most of their true meaning. Instead, they’re now used as spam comments to flood a video’s comment section with random and annoying messages. And it’s a trend that a lot of TikTok users seem to be tired of.  Twitter user @wavyemma Tweeted, “i’m ngl that story time, crop, brownies recipe s*** on tiktok in the most unfunny thing i’ve ever experienced. i haven’t cracked a smile once.” @yurieruzar also expressed their annoyance with the trend, Tweeting, “I hate that tiktok comments are now full of ‘crop’ ‘story time?’ Now I can’t find the actual funny comments :/.”

Unfortunately, these spam comments are nothing new for TikTok. A trend in July 2020 saw people repeatedly leaving blank comments on videos. The more recent ‘brownie recipe’ trend sees people literally commenting a generic recipe for brownies. ‘Story time’ and ‘crop’ comments aren’t the first spam comments to flood TikTok, and if history repeats itself, they won’t be the last either.

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Source: TikTok, Twitter (1), (2)

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About The Author


Joe Maring
(1539 Articles Published)

Joe has been actively writing and talking about consumer tech since 2012. His biggest passion lies with smartphones, but he’s happy to talk your ear off about just about anything with a CPU. He lives in Kalamazoo, MI with his wife, two cats, and pit bull/boxer mix.

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