While social media has certainly strayed far from its roots of keeping you connected with your loved ones, it has sprung up plenty of new opportunities for niche communities and new content styles.
One such style? Counterpoint content.
What Is Counterpoint Content?
It's a fair question, given the phrase itself is something we made up! But once we explain it, you'll no doubt recognize the content style — especially if you've spent any time on TikTok.
Counterpoint content is a style of content meant to directly refute or address other creators, often with references to that create or even bits of their own content in the new content. While people have been "arguing online" seemingly since the dawn of electronic communication, counterpoint content is more specifically about using somebody else's content in public to build your audience and share your views. It's not necessarily meant to elicit a reaction from the original creator (though if it does, then it becomes the gift that keeps on giving).
It's kind of like a courtroom. Lawyers are trying their case in public, but they are doing it in order to convince the jury or judge, not the other lawyer. Counterpoint content is less about "arguing" with a creator, and more about using them as a springboard for your own content.
As you can probably guess, a lot of counterpoint content nowadays is political. But it doesn't have to be. There are also people who utilize counterpoint content for comedy. Or to discuss science, or history, or just about any other topic you can think of.
The Origin Of Counterpoint Content
Again, arguing online or duking it out in the comments is far from new. Only the most disciplined of us have managed to completely avoid a flame war throughout our time online (and we don't count ourselves among the most disciplined in that regard).
Some of the earliest websites intended to build community and create discourse, like GeoCities. Those platforms, which allowed users to build their own web pages, eventually led to places like Reddit, which became one of the most popular platforms that allowed users to not only comment in threads publicly, but also be "upvoted" or "downvoted" on their comments. These activities, among others, helped users accrue status on the platform for their contributions.
Fast forward a few years, and a YouTube trend known as "response videos" started to take hold. Here, users would upload their own videos on their own channels in direct response to another creator's content. Unlike a subreddit, however, these videos still lived in disparate places, meaning they generated multiple siloed conversations.
And then, on September 3rd, 2020, TikTok introduced the "stitch" function. This feature allowed other users to take the beginning of another creator's video and then essentially interrupt it with their own. This feature was arguably the catalyst for the boom in counterpoint content.
How Creators Use This Content Style To Catapult Their Followings
What makes counterpoint content so effective is that it allows creators to essentially "borrow" proven hooks and then either support or subvert expectations. This can be done to humorous effect, or as a way to extract a quick emotional reaction from your audience.
For instance, a clever creator may take the beginning part of a video where somebody says something like, "Here's the best way to get a hot date for Valentine's Day," and then immediately cut in with something counterintuitive to typical advice, like showcasing your wall of collectible Yoshi figurines. Not only will your existing audience love it, you'll be more likely to find a much larger audience because the general hook you used applies to a broader swath, but your specific niche (being a lovable nerd who collects Yoshi stuff) will still attract a decent percentage of that broader swath.
You're essentially getting the best of both worlds — an opportunity to reach people your content may not typically reach, while still creating content that is very much in your wheelhouse.
Political creators use counterpoint content to great effect. One common method is to include the first few seconds of a video that your typical audience would never see because they don't typically live in that particular political echo chamber. This clip will probably initially create a knee-jerk reaction for them and make them want to swipe away. But the best counterpoint creators pick the perfect moment to cut in and show that this video is actually going to be the opposite of whatever it first seemed like. Sometimes they'll even include text on the screen saying "Stitch Incoming" to let their audience know they didn't end up in the wrong algorithm.
Then, throughout the video, the creator will typically play direct clips from that other person and cut in with their own counterpoints, much to the delight of their typical audience. It has the opportunity to also attract engagement from other political viewpoints, which can then create a significant cycle of engagement and watch time. Creators can also use the feature of responding to a comment with a video in a similar way. While these can be really effective, they still miss the opportunity of using a hook from a different creator.
One of the things about this style of content that can be beneficial is it allows your audience to feel like they're still getting what they signed up for when they followed you, but also being exposed to other viewpoints. So it's not quite an echo chamber, but it's certainly still done in a way that satisfies the audience's desire to be affirmed in their beliefs.
Using Counterpoint Content To Combat Misinformation And AI Scams
Unfortunately, social media misinformation has only been on the rise, and with the advent of generative AI, it's never been easier to mislead and scam people. But that also presents the perfect opportunity for experts in their fields to utilize counterpoint content.
An article in Rolling Stone recently pointed out a troubling trend of AI-generated avatars claiming to be doctors and experts to sell bogus products. One creator who integrates counterpoint content in their feed really well is Javon Ford, a cosmetic chemist who often debunks different claims around health and wellness (while also promoting products he personally trusts). Ford tells Rolling Stone that his primary concern isn't necessarily AI replacing creators for good content, it's companies using AI to lie to consumers. "My issue is that they're not disclosing the AI in these ads or they're just blatantly lying," Ford tells Rolling Stone. "Scientific illiteracy is at an all time high. Literacy in general is pretty low, unfortunately. And it's important that people are able to still think critically and become more vigilant and mindful about how we absorb this information."
Ford says he traced some of the created adds back to the platform Captions.ai, which is one of the original and most popular apps created for adding captions to content (and one we at RootNote use for generating captions as well). Captions.ai has since added other features, including the ability to generate lifelike avatars in short clips. The platform's terms and conditions barre users from using the app to misrepresent your or someone else's likeness, but it's unclear if or how they enforce that rule.
Platforms like TikTok and Instagram similarly ban content like the videos described above, but again — they're obviously making it through the censors, and being used as ads to sell products. Even when the platforms take them down after they're flagged for deceptive practices, new ads and accounts pop up in a matter of hours.
So in the meantime, one of the only ways to counteract these types of scams is to use them in counterpoint content, where actually professionals can call out their misleading claims. And as disheartening as it is that the original videos are able to rack up tons of views, it creates an opportunity for creators with the skills to create compelling counterpoint content to break through the noise and generate awareness around this type of misleading content.