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\n Carl Kinsella<\/p>\n
\u201cBAD NEWS FOR many people in County Wicklow today.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
That was the caption chosen by Councillor Joe Behan on Tuesday for a TikTok video, following a vote by Wicklow County Council to approve a new Rents Scheme that will see rents go up for people in local authority housing as well as those on the private rental market.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Unfortunately for Behan, a technical mishap with TikTok meant that the first minute of the three-minute video is largely inaudible underneath a swelling, swarming and profoundly horrifying musical accompaniment, beginning with a screech before giving way to a noise that sounds like an eldritch abomination emerging from the bottom of the sea after a thousand millennia of dreamless sleep, finally ready to drag humanity into the abyss.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Many TikTok users got a laugh out of the video and took to the comment section to join in on the joke. Some of the highlights included:\n<\/p>\n
\u201cA very ominous message, I don\u2019t know what you said, but I\u2019m scared Joe.\u201d
\n\u201cCheers Joe. I\u2019m absolutely terrified now but I\u2019ve no idea why. Keep it up.\u201d
\n\u201cI\u2019m literally shaking thanks for letting me know Joe.\u201d
\n\u201cThinking of you all in Wicklow, sounds frightening\u201d<\/p>\n
The Journal<\/a> \/ YouTube<\/p>\n Speaking to The Journal this morning, Behan could see the funny side of his newfound virality, and explained how the video came to be.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m new to TikTok, I don\u2019t have the experience of the TikTok T\u00e1naiste when it comes to these things,\u201d Behan said, referring to Simon Harris\u2019 use of social media.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously some algorithm on TikTok produced this horror music. It must have been related to the first three words [of the caption]. So this musical accompaniment appears and I didn\u2019t notice it until I posted it, and what I\u2019ve discovered since is that you can\u2019t edit the post once you\u2019ve posted it to TikTok, so I was stuck.\u201d<\/p>\n An ironic consequence of the video\u2019s profoundly ominous soundtrack is that it has reached far more users than Behan\u2019s previous content. The councillor, who first took his seat on Wicklow County Council in 1985 and had a four-year stint as a TD between 2007 and 2011, received a combined 18,000 views on his first two TikTok videos. Yesterday\u2019s video has already amassed over a quarter of a million views. Very respectably, the video is still available to watch on the councillor\u2019s TikTok account<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Behan was eager to point out that the same video had been posted to his other social media channels without the horror movie score.\u00a0 \u201cIt wasn\u2019t done deliberately by any means. I certainly wouldn\u2019t be trying to do it deliberately because I wouldn\u2019t want to hide from the seriousness of the message that I\u2019m putting across,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cObviously there was a lot of merriment and people having a laugh, but if people waited, the music dies down after the first minute and the point I\u2019m making is that a lot of people renting in Wicklow are going to be hit with additional charges, particularly old age pensioners living in council houses, their rent is going to double.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite yesterday\u2019s snafu, Behan still sees the advantages of social media when it comes to communicating with the public.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt allows for an unfiltered message from you as a politician to the people,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen I first got elected 41 years ago, the only way the message went out from a meeting in Bray was in The Bray People the following week, we didn\u2019t even have local radio in those early days.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt has shown me that TikTok is unforgiving if you make a mistake. I\u2019ll have to get a few lessons from Simon Harris. He\u2019s the pro. But every day is a schoolday.\u201d<\/p>\n