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Paramount uploads Mean Girls to TikTok across 23 video clips

Paramount uploads Mean Girls to TikTok across 23 video clips

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‘Raise your hand if you have ever been personally victimized by clips of The Good Doctor on TikTok.’

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A screenshot taken from the Mean Girls (2004) movie.
Stop trying to make segmented consumption of media happen (please).
Image: Paramount Pictures

Update October 4th, 5:53PM ET: After we first published this article, Paramount removed the clips allowing you to watch the entire Mean Girls movie from the Mean Girls TikTok account. Our original story follows.


Today is Mean Girls Day, a date that fans of the 2004 teen comedy may recognize as the same day that heartthrob Aaron Samuels (Jonathan Bennett) asked Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan) what day it is (“It’s October 3rd.”), and Paramount Pictures has found an unusual way to celebrate the occasion. The studio has created an official TikTok account where you can watch the entire movie for free — provided you’re happy to do so over multiple video snippets.

The entire 107-minute long movie has been split into 23 clips, emulating a popular method of streaming piracy on platforms like TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube that’s used to circumvent restrictions on the length of uploaded videos and avoid being flagged by copyright detection software. Rather than having someone else rake in the views through TikTok’s algorithm, it seems Paramount is hoping to beat pirates at their own game. It’s not a regular studio — it’s a cool studio.

The quality of the clips themselves does appear to be of a higher quality than the random snippets of Young Sheldon and The Good Doctor that keep blighting my TikTok timeline. Paramount has even labeled each part so that you can keep track of where you are. If you (understandably) prefer to watch Mean Girls in its entirety, however, then it’s also currently available to stream on Paramount Plus.

Some studios have previously released entire episodes of their shows onto YouTube and, eventually, X (formerly Twitter) now that longer videos can be uploaded to the platform, usually to draw in potential subscribers to the streaming service the series is typically hosted on. It’s unusual to see a studio embracing the same marketing methods used by those who are pirating its content — especially for a movie that’s likely older than most of TikTok’s user base.