Subgenre of Internet Comments for Video Promotion

The paper describes the subgenre of an Internet comment for video promotion based on several videos from the TikTok social media. The users resort to this subgenre in order to expand the viewer audience of the author of the video commented on and in order to aid content monetization. It has been established that the characteristic features of primary Internet comments for promotion of videos include the absence of semantic connection between the comments and the content of the video and, as a rule, the intention to generate as many secondary comments from other users as possible. Primary and secondary Internet comments for promotion of the video form a comment thread. Internet comments for video promotion can be presented in the form of personal and casual conversational phrases; calls to perform a certain action related to typing (e.g., type a full stop in response to the primary comment); word games in written (typed) form, such as the Cities game; calls to perform an action with a limited multitude (alphabet, prime number sequence, etc.). Secondary Internet comments may include non-verbal texts (e.g., emojis). The most basic form of an Internet comment for promotion of videos is considered to be the phrase “I promote” (продвигаю), other phrases with this verb, and statements such as “I’m commenting here for video promotion” (Пишу это для продвижения ролика).

subgenre, Internet commentary, promotion, TikTok, video clip, cue-stimulus, cue-response, internet comment thread