If you’ve spent any time at all on TikTok, you’ll likely recognize Ayamé, the creator pictured above—perhaps even without ever seeing her own videos. The CapCut of template of her singing along to Rihanna’s “Umbrella” has been used widely across the platform, with people putting up images next to her singing with the caption “sing if you find them attractive”.
Used largely for actors, interior design, and other more niche interests, it’s a fun trend—until it’s not. Ayamé (ayame.p on TikTok) recently shared a video where she, apparently half serious, half laughing, ranted about how her face and voice are being used in videos that she has no control over.
“I’m being tagged in videos that I don’t necessarily agree with or even have any knowledge on,” Ayamé said in a video. “There was a video that I’ve been tagged on where I’m scream-singing to different types of knitting and crochet. I don’t even know what the differences are!”
Although the TikTok creator is apparently laughing in her video and shared it with a jokey caption of “Just a lil breakdown on a Thursday, you know how it goes”, a few days previously saw her share a horrified reaction to a specific TikTok. Her CapCut video was used to rank Republican politicians, with the loudest, most passionate line being given to Trump.
Ayamé was quite literally too stunned to speak, captioning the video simply: “I can’t believe this is how they’re using my CapCut template.”
While there’s not a whole lot Ayamé can do at this point, with enough versions of her singing template out there for her to stop, it’s a lesson learned from the viral nature of stitching and templates on TikTok. The TikTok algorithm works in mysterious ways and some creators have already complained about the lack of credit given to the original creators of sounds and templates.
In this case, Ayamé might be getting a lot more credit than she wants, with her face and voice used to promote everything from crochet to Trump. Still, her videos distancing herself from specific videos have gained the highest amount of views out of her recent videos, all shooting over one million views and even 12 million views in one case, so there’s a silver lining to the grey CapCut cloud at least.
(featured image: ayame.p)
