A new horror-themed trend is sweeping TikTok and Instagram, leaving many users surprised and scared: time travelers interrupting classic videos.
This type of content often takes famous videos and memes from years past, but changes the ending using artificial intelligence (AI). Creators take clips from the past to disrupt their narrative, taking them in strange directions with unexpected characters appearing in the video and often ruining the initial sense of the material.
The underlying idea is to suggest that unknown “time travelers” have gone back in time in our history to prevent the original videos from being shared, thus preventing the pranks from spreading on social media and hindering their virality. These travelers are often sinister characters and the content is accompanied by equally spooky music.
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From Vine to TikTok
TikTok’s time-traveler videos draw on old, popular clips, especially those made famous on the Vine platform about ten years ago. Early YouTube memes and other famous content have also been adapted to the new trend, contributing to an even more spooky feel.
These types of videos represent a new and peculiar way of using artificial intelligence to create content, provoking mixed reactions among users: many consider them funny, while others point out the potential dangers of the technology and how it would alter the kind of audiovisual materials we see in the future.
Making one of these videos is relatively simple, although it may take some time. Many take advantage of a site called Luma AIwhich calls itself “Dream Machine (Dream Machine)” and allows you to create them from a single image and instruction (prompt).
To start, you have to take a screenshot of the last scene of a classic film, choosing an iconic moment. Once you sign up for Luma AI, you upload the screenshot and insert the promptsuch as “menacing men enter the scene.” The generation process takes between 5 and 10 minutes. Once you have the video, you need to add the appropriate music to evoke the horror atmosphere you want. The song they use for the time traveler trend is “Marking Time, Waiting for Death” by Shirō Sagisu, from the soundtrack from anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. Then, using a video editor like Capcut, you modify the original clip with the AI-generated content, adding background music. Finally, just upload the material to social networks such as TikTok, Instagram, X or other platforms.
Time travelers, in different languages
Like many viral trends on social networks, it is only a matter of time to witness how each market adapts them to their respective audiences, creating versions in local languages with their own content that is part of the digital heritage of the history of each country.
And Mexico is no exception. Thus, we find this popular AI-modified clip of a girl preparing to eat a bag of Doritos Nachos, when a time traveler appears behind her to put a twist on the video’s original ending.
TikTok content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
