In honor of October 3rd, also known as “Mean Girls Day” in internet meme parlance, Paramount has uploaded the entire 2004 high school comedy to the TikTok app.
Yup, that’s right — anyone willing to watch the film vertically, broken up into 23 chunks, can now pull up “Mean Girls” for free.
@meangirls TikTok just got a little more fetch. #MeanGirls ♬ Mean Girls is available on Digital – Mean Girls
This “Mean Girls” stunt isn’t happening in isolation. Increasingly, entertainment companies have started experimenting with new ways of releasing and sharing content, recognizing that attention on social media and cultural “buzz” may matter more, in the long run, than a hefty ad spend or platform exclusivity.
This is a dramatic swing from the early days of streaming when studios and copyright holders more generally tended to take a sort of “zero-sum” approach to new platforms. At its core, the understanding was that rarity, even exclusivity, gives content its value. In order to get a mass of new subscribers to your streaming platform, the thinking went, you needed lots of high-profile original shows that were unavailable to view anywhere else.
This philosophy went beyond just streaming platforms as well. Exhibitors demanded lengthy exclusive theatrical windows for new movies before they could go on streaming platforms, afraid that Netflix or HBO Max might cannibalize their box office returns. The rivalry over having to share streaming rights of “South Park” between their two services got so heated, that Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount sued one another earlier this year.
Hollywood copyright holders are also notorious for striking down videos containing film and TV content on social media platforms like YouTube. For example, immediately after Twitter/X started offering posts with longer video streams, users started posting bootlegged copies of Hollywood films, requiring the app to find and shut them down individually, like a digital game of whack-a-mole. …
