Humans seem morph creatively to whatever the current medium is. Their appetite for content has proved to be insatiable. For example, when the camera was invented, painting as an art form wasn’t forgotten. Rather, paintings and photographs existed together and gave more people a means of expression. And as philosophical as it sounds, humans never slowed down consuming and creating content. I think the same applies for exploring the relationship between images, videos, and text.

McCloud proves that the combination of words + images can strengthen each others’ meanings. And to take it a step further, a strong combination better captures our attention. Tik Tok has seen trends of absurdity and sensationalism to catch viewers’ attention. And the most viral Tik Toks use both text and video. I think there is unexplored territory in shortform video + text to move viewers using unexpected combinations of image and text.

Example and another example