UNSCROLLING THE TIKTOK AESTHETIC
WE DISAPPEAR FOR HOURS INTO THE VIDEO-SHARING APP EVEN AS LAWMAKERS RAISE ALARMS ABOUT ITS CHINESE PARENT COMPANY. WHAT MAKES IT SO ADDICTIVE?
IF F R A N Z K A F K A were to reconceive “The Metamorphosis” for our era, he might decide to ditch the novella in favor of a series of surreal TikToks — Gregor Samsa as eyes and mouth green-screened onto a picture of a roach jacked from the web. ¶ Kafka is long gone. But thankfully, we have Kendria Bland, a Mississippi comedian who does a semiregular bit on TikTok about the travails of a pack of domestic roaches who like to party behind the refrigerator and sneak Popeyes when the humans aren’t around. One defiant arthropod, Roachkeishiana, refuses to scuttle when the lights come on and crafts a wig out of hair she finds in the bathtub. “You know how many times I got stepped on?” she says with a haughty hair toss. “I’m still here.” ¶ The skits bring together a complex array of sight gags while winking at the tropes of ’hood films and sensationalist talk shows. But the production values couldn’t be more lo-fi: Bland plays every role with different wigs and uses TikTok’s editing tools to green-screen herself twerking on a kitchen table and fighting a pair of beetles. The crude special effects won’t win her an Oscar, but on TikTok, perfection takes a backseat to wit.
Bland’s comedy represents TikTok’s promise. The app, which presents short-form videos in a frantic endless scroll, is governed by (famously creepy) algorithms that deliver posts to those deemed likely to enjoy them — which is how a one-minute cockroach skit by a comedian in Vossburg, Miss., can draw 1.3 million likes and be shared almost 90,000 times, including by me. (I am here for all cucaracha content.)
Despite — or rather because of — its ubiquity, TikTok finds itself in the crosshairs. The app has long raised concerns for the ways its parent company, the Chinese tech firm ByteDance, may employ the mountains of data it harvests from its users. Just before Christmas, a report unearthed evidence that ByteDance employees — already criticized for suppressing content such as Black Lives Matter posts — had taken an even more Orwellian turn, using location data to track journalists. Some university campuses in the U.S. have banned the app from their networks and numerous states prohibit it on government devices. And a newly signed federal law has extended the ban to all government devices.
The alarm over security hasn’t put a damper on the app. TikTok couldn’t be more popular — especially among teenagers. It has had more than 3 billion downloads globally and its engagement rates outdo Facebook and Instagram. It is relentlessly sticky — addictive, one might say. And whatever its fate, it has already transformed culture: reshaping language, turning dance moves into social currency and making video into something we watch vertically rather than horizontally. When Noodle, a TikTok-famous pug died last month, obituaries proliferated across news media. The last pop concert you went to? Its set may have been inspired by the aesthetics of TikTok.
What are those aesthetics? An app as acutely atomized as TikTok can make those a challenge to articulate. So I have borrowed the format of “Notes on Camp,” in which the ultimate high-low interpreter, Susan Sontag, attempts to pin down the elusive sensibility that is camp. “Many things in the world have not been named,” she writes in the opener, “and many things, even if they have been named, have never been described.”
So with apologies to Sontag, here are my notes on TikTok:
1. THE TIKTOK AESTHETIC IS AN ANTI-AESTHETIC.
Instagram, with its historically square frame and vaguely cursive font (formally known as Instagram Sans), is the “Live Laugh Love” pillow of the social media apps — evoking high gloss and photogenic meals. Facebook’s dull-blue interface feels so bureaucratic that critic Joanne McNeil once wrote that it looked “as if a government body were running it.”
TikTok’s design, by contrast, is almost no design. On a phone, practically the entire window is handed over to video, with controls discreetly laid out around the right and bottom edges. There are no brightly colored frames. TikTok’s logo rarely even comes into view — usually only appearing when a video is shared.
This design reduces the presence of any one person or brand. Handles and avatars of content creators are so minimal they almost elude legibility. I am a fan of numerous creators on
TikTok. I’d be hard-pressed to name more than a few of them.
2. TIKTOK’S NON-AESTHETIC PROMOTES A PERCEIVED INFORMALITY.
If Instagram is the airbrushed influencer, TikTok is the friend you talk trash with at the end of the day. TikTokkers face the camera in bathrobes and hair bonnets while sitting in their cars or standing before their bathroom mirror. A common convention is for people to film themselves while tucked into bed.
I follow Shabaz Ali (@shabazsays) for his biting duets (these allow TikTok users to place their own video side by side with another). In his bits, Ali offers running commentary on videos that feature ostentatious displays of wealth — such as a poolside doghouse or a heated driveway. In each post he is lying down, wrapped in a fuzzy fleece blanket. If you happen to be sprawled on a couch while scrolling TikTok (which I overwhelmingly am), the sensation is of being on a video call together, sharing an eye roll over the worst rich people habits.
Except that you’re not.
3. ON TIKTOK, YOU DON’T FOLLOW PEOPLE, YOU FOLLOW AN ALGORITHM. OR, RATHER, THE ALGORITHM FOLLOWS YOU.
Unlike other apps, TikTok doesn’t require you to follow anybody in order to view videos. In fact, the app undermines the practice, shooting videos straight to the For You Page (a.k.a. the FYP), which greets you every time you log on. That feed is driven not by your careful selections but by algorithms.
In 2020, TikTok offered a cursory explainer on this recommendation system, which is drawn from your device’s settings as well as your habits. “A strong indicator of interest, such as whether a user finishes watching a longer video from beginning to end,” the post explains, “would receive greater weight than a weak indicator, such as whether the video’s viewer and creator are both in the same country.”
Alex Zhu, the Chinese tech entrepreneur who devised TikTok’s progenitor, the lip
TikTok, E6]