Wednesday, November 25, 2020
Inconceivable: TikToker Who Made Paint Mixing Very, Very Cool... Is Fired From Sherwin-Williams For Doing So
Techdirt: TikTok remains a somewhat fascinating service to me, as different people experiment with using it to express all sorts of things in ways that are unexpected and often delightful. A couple months ago I discovered that there appears to be an entire genre of TikTokers creating videos about... mixing paint colors. I know... I know. At first that sounds insane. Who could possibly want to watch that?
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5 comments:
This is why I love Tiktok! Although it is super problematic and is stealing all of our data, it also has so many cool different people on there. I have come across some really talented and unique artists, designers, and local business owners that have very quickly become some of my favorite places to shop! Tik Tok is filled with artists from all around the world that are all different ages and each have really specific styles and techniques. I’ve learned so much just from the community on that app and I feel like that’s what it’s really about, other than just for fun and a good time. Other than just discovering cool new artists and designers, I’ve also learned how to cook on tiktok! So many of the users are young college students, so I’ve definitely picked up some life hacks from Tiktok that I’ve used in real life. Those are the highlights of a community driven app like Tiktok, it’s really just people talking to people at the end of the day.
I found this article very disappointing. I recognize these tik toks and they have often shown up on my for you page. It is interesting to have people guess the color and I remember one very funny video where the mixer was making black, they put in so much black dye and mixed but the paint still came back light grey. As for this man being fired, I think that it is very absurd of Sherwin- Williams to fire him. I dotn see how he was doing any harm to their business. If anything he was creating more excitement for their paints and probably increasing sales. I bet there was some dispute over him representing the brand and copyright of ideas somehow. I dont know exactly. Also the blue berry paint video was very interesting to me, He didnt even put that many in so I was confused that that was actually the color that blue berries would make.
I did not really think that a TikTok would ever be relevant enough to make it on the Newspage but here we are! Of course, I am well aware of these paint mixing videos and I have even heard stories of employees getting fired because of them which is crazy. These trends are simply of a paint dispensing machine at a hardware store and then it goes into a shaker before the final color is revealed. The videos are quite peaceful and a fun mind-game to try and guess the colors based on the primary colors that were added and then mixed together. It is always awful to hear about someone losing their job, however, I can not say I am that surprised by this situation. The power that the influence TikTok has, has caused a number of problems whether it be personal or overrunning a business because it went viral and can not keep up with demand. I am glad to hear that this guy has another job with a company that acknowledges his worth with such an online following.
Bit of a weird grey zone story to read about. On one hand I am not surprised that he lost his job for doing this. Most contracts seem to have written into them this kind of stuff as violations of the contractual agreement made upon employment but even if it wasn’t violated the videos wouldn’t be clear enough to prove that it wasn’t so it would likely lead to a firing anyways. Any sort of video related thing while on the job is almost always now concerns for violation and thus potential for being fired. On the other hand, taking the appropriate precautions and doing everything “right” so to speak should mean that there is no ground to be fired and content like this should be allowed without worry of being fired. Either way there is not a clear story and a lot of information left out in order to make a judgement on this but it is always good to hear that the person who was fired ended up at a better company in the end.
I have seen this man on Tik Tok!! A lot of realms of Tik Tok have their issues, but this dude was always so positive and fun, and his stuff was not only nice to look at, but also a cool lesson in color mixing. I think that the fact that this guy lost his job doing something that was clearly not bringing any negative attention to the company is really frustrating. If it was a little mom and pop and they needed him to be totally focused on his job, maybe I would feel differently, but this is Sherwin-Williams. They can afford a little gap in productivity. Also, if they had taken 8 seconds to think, they could have incorporated this into their marketing and publicity. Instead, they decided that they should “make a lesson” out of some dude who was clearly just doing a fun something to get by and brighten peoples’ days.
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