Introduction
TikTok is no longer just an application but a cultural phenomenon that has become the leading platform for communication for a whole generation worldwide. It is worth noting that TikTok is a social media platform that enables users to create and share music videos, engage in live streaming, and send messages. The video platform has become a leader in the Chinese market and is rapidly expanding to other countries (Zeng & Abidin, 2021).
It is claimed by individual users and companies promoting their brands on TikTok. The central secret of TikTok is to encourage users to create as many videos as possible, thereby promoting the platform. Additionally, TikTok is the world’s highest-growth social network, providing a straightforward platform for publishing and distributing content. The service allows users to create short videos with music, filters, and other features (Zeng & Abidin, 2021). Generally, such videos are produced in response to popular online trends, which makes them go viral and become memes.
Moreover, if the video corresponds to users’ moods and preferences, they create their own variations. In this way, one idea can offer millions of interpellations to all social network users with the virality effect. Therefore, it is essential to establish how TikTok, with its use of memes and virality, affects communication, discourse, and pop culture.
Meme Influences
TikTok, a social network, has generated a lot of conversation and has become one of the most powerful platforms in the world. Thus, it is perceived as a service that has managed to surpass sites such as YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook in terms of the number of statement downloads within a short period. This is mainly because TikTok has adopted a new format of short videos, where users can engage in something entertaining. It includes challenges, dance challenges, pranks, and funny pet videos (Guinaudeau & Votta, 2022). In this way, it is permitted that many young people are passionate about the type of content on TikTok and how to make money.
Now, since it is a platform that promotes entertainment within its community, numerous memes have caused a stir on this social media application. Because TikTok’s algorithm quickly and to a great extent manages viral content, viewers are using memes to connect with their followers. The word “meme” is derived from the Greek “Mime,” which refers to something that is imitated (Schellewald, 2021). For many years, the concept has been coined on the Internet to describe all ideas that are massively reproduced in social networks. Consequently, they are transmitted from one person to another in an explosive manner.
In this way, a meme can be defined as an element that supports different formats, such as sentences, images, or videos, and has a humorous theme. This feature enables memes to become an international phenomenon, spreading to all regions of the world (Su et al., 2020). As a result, TikTok memes and exclusive videos are characterized by high relevance in the digital environment. Since then, in addition to being sensational in their own right, memes can quickly become viral through the benefits of the same social media application (Su et al., 2020). This is why there are still many amusing TikTok memes on the Internet.
Memes can contain different symbolic constructions depending on the country and social context. Research results demonstrate that despite the dominance of Anglo-American pop culture in creating Internet memes, the themes of Internet memes vary between countries (Zulli, 2022). Local themes and plots are often used in political Internet memes. For example, the images of bottles are often used to mock the figure of the Moroccan king in local Internet communities, which refers to their widespread use by the Moroccan secret services as an instrument of torture (Zulli, 2022).
A common practice for disseminating information about protests is to play up documented images of police violence. The increasing role of memes in people’s lives is also reflected in the repertoire of protest movements. Experts highlight a special form of memetic digital protest in which users add thematic captions to their avatars or accompany their messages with hashtags (Zulli, 2022). In this way, flash mobs are becoming more memetic in nature.
In such campaigns, people share personal experiences and stories that illustrate a common social problem affecting many other users. Memes, in this case, act not only as a tool for disseminating information but also as a device for engaging new users in protest, in the roles of both readers and storytellers (Zulli, 2022). Among researchers, there is no unambiguous opinion about the role of memes in developing the culture of communication on the Internet. Hence, the routine consumption of Internet memes on TikTok has positive effects. For example, users learn interesting facts that they did not know before.
Additionally, they can find like-minded individuals more quickly and even organize community meetings (Zulli, 2022). At the same time, negative factors affect TikTok’s communication. For instance, the spread of racist discourse online, the undermining of a culture of political correctness, the delegitimization of the political process, the spread of fake news, and ageist attitudes.
Meanwhile, it is essential to highlight the main trends of TikTok memes. One of the TikTok memes that has caused the most resentment on the social network is the camouflaged talisman. Following the example set by this video, many users began to create their own home mascots. In this sense, owners dress their dogs in humorous outfits to create a video and share it on their TikTok profile (Guinaudeau & Votta, 2022). These costumes make the animals resemble stuffed animals, and although they look funny, people encourage them to run down the hall.
The addition of music also makes it overly elaborate. Therefore, the memes in TikTok form a discourse, which, in this case, is a negative one. That is why such videos encourage the use of pets for entertainment.
Moreover, it is essential to note that memes on TikTok serve as a means for individuals and communities to express their opinions and perspectives. The primary users of social networks are teenagers, members of Generation Z, and individuals born into the digital world. They gradually replace long forms with short ones, hence the clip thinking, the ability to quickly grasp a large amount of information (Guinaudeau & Votta, 2022).
Thus, memes that spread in this network influence users’ perception of information. Accordingly, people now communicate with the help of memes, sending them to each other and trying to adapt some of them to real life. As a result, this affects the style of communication and the pop culture of Gen Z.
Virality Impacts
It is essential to emphasize that the primary purpose of all TikTokers is to appear in the recommended section, which provides an opportunity to accumulate a large number of views. Predicting the virality of videos is impossible, and the principle of content ranking in TikTok recommendations is unidentified. However, what is known is that TikTok operates on a unique algorithm that utilizes artificial intelligence and machine learning to display the most relevant content to each user in their feed (Guinaudeau & Votta, 2022).
The application carefully tracks which types of videos users interact with first to determine relevance. For example, more cooking videos will appear in their feeds if people like cooking videos. The algorithm also establishes correlations based on various videos with which the same users interact. The system is similar to Netflix or Amazon recommendations, which suggest shows or products that users with similar interests often choose.
In addition, virality is the property of content that spreads widely without effort on the part of its authors because users willingly share it with others. Memes are a classic example of viral content. They typically feature a video or image accompanied by one or two lines of text (Vázquez-Herrero et al., 2022). However, any online content that appeals to users enough to make them want to share can spread virally.
The advantage of viral content on TikTok is that such content is a quick and effective way to engage and interest the audience. Consumers share viral content with friends and acquaintances to convey useful information or share an emotional experience. With viral marketing, the reach of accounts grows automatically, and the audience remains undisturbed.
Viral content on TikTok can be demonstrated when the TikTokers create and publish their videos. For instance, they imitate an alien dance, bringing great pleasure to viewers, including children, who try to imitate the epic dance of a friendly green alien. In addition, due to the increased recognition, the song “Dame tu cosita” entered the Hot 100 in the U.S., reaching the 81st position with 1,000 downloads and 10.4 million in airplay. Nevertheless, the song was written in 1998 and became famous 20 years later (Vázquez-Herrero et al., 2022, p. 1719). Accordingly, the virality in TikTok contributes not only to the style of communication but also to pop culture.
The same occurred with Adele, a famous American singer who conveys emotions through various songs. “Someone Like You” became a trend on TikTok because a viral video featured the Lone Gum Bear singing the song’s first words (Vázquez-Herrero et al., 2022). After that, when Adele’s microphone is turned off and the audience sings the rest of the chorus, the camera slides across the vast audience of gummy bears. Apparently, the crowd extends as far as the eye can see, while presumably hundreds of jelly bears sing Adele’s well-known song. Thus, the social media platform TikTok creates short videos that quickly influence pop culture.
At the same time, TikTok memes are the most viral. For example, the “time tunnel in the subway” is a popular TikTok meme that has sparked a notable trend in China among social media platform users who have shared similar videos (Vázquez-Herrero et al., 2022). These occur in the subway and show that they discover an alternate universe once they get off the carriage. Because of its virality, even China’s Xi’an subway system shared a video based on this meme (Vázquez-Herrero et al., 2022). In interpreting China’s Xi’an subway system, two employees on casual leave walk from the railroad tracks to their workplace, wearing yellow safety vests and blue overalls.
Another instance of a TikTok meme that has become viral and has influenced public opinion on the dance. The TikTok meme, known as “Random Dance on the stairs,” was performed by several dancers who stood on the stairs and coordinated the chorus (Vázquez-Herrero et al., 2022). The video has a significant viral impact on social media applications due to its live dance. Consequently, thousands of TikTok users had to climb the stairs and encourage others to demonstrate their skills with this viral meme, set to the rhythm of exciting music. Additionally, due to the sensation it created on the platform, tutorials even emerged on how to perform this dance.
Thus, TikTok is distinguished by its rapid virality, which can change constantly. Furthermore, it is one of the most effective tools for business promotion. Viral content triggers a chain reaction, allowing you to increase brand awareness and popularity (Cervi, 2021). In this way, a new pop culture and discourse are emerging through songs that have gained fame due to short videos on TikTok.
The Impact of TikTok’s “Cancel Culture”
It is essential to note that cancel culture is a relatively recent phenomenon in the media landscape. With the global spread of social networks, blogs, and YouTube channels, almost no one is left who does not subscribe to at least one media personality (Zeng & Abidin, 2021). The Internet community eventually needed a means of control over those who surpassed them in social status and influence, which is what cancel culture became.
In TikTok, this phenomenon is also prevalent; the key idea and task of cancel culture is to hold famous personalities accountable for violations of a social or political nature (Zeng & Abidin, 2021). Within TikTok, the Internet community can identify and ostracize incorrect statements and actions as outliers, deviating from generally accepted norms. On the social media platform TikTok, the phenomenon of cancel culture is prevalent and manifests as described below. A star or other public figure makes a mistake or says or writes something offensive to a group of people in social networks. Afterwards, there is a negative reaction from society, which is often captured and spread by social media users.
Then there are calls to remove the person from office, end their career, or level their cultural achievements. An example of this phenomenon on TikTok is the user Ness Barrett, a popular author with 7.3 million followers. Recently, the author posted and then deleted a video of a woman performing a sexy dance to a song from the Koran (Zeng & Abidin, 2021, p. 2461).
Users quickly criticized the author’s attitude toward religion, explaining how offensive her actions are to Islamic people. This prompted Nessa Barrett to publish a video with an apology. Accordingly, the woman’s video went viral and was viewed by many network users. As a result, they started to massively eliminate the woman’s actions and put pressure on the woman with their protest videos.
Hence, the social network TikTok significantly impacts the spread of cancel culture. In 2019, the influence of social networks on the formation of trends was approximately 2%, and in 2020, TikTok surpassed Facebook in terms of influence (Zeng & Abidin, 2021, p. 2461). The application has a more significant impact on users and applies algorithms with precision. It is worth noting that such content will be constantly encountered, like a political post, once. Thus, with the help of its algorithms, TikTok spreads some users’ protest moods, which significantly affects the spread of сancel culture.
Conclusion
When developing the marketing strategy, the TikTok team focused on the preferences and habits of young people, particularly in creative expression. Users engage in the simplest ways by singing songs, dancing, or synchronizing their mouths to the music. Accordingly, users choose ideas for such videos and broadcast them on their accounts. Thus, they can express a protest, which other users support, or create a video that will become a meme.
Additionally, with the help of the virality effect, ideas that gain followers become popular in the network. This can be related to a song or dance that will form a new style in pop culture. Moreover, short videos are a form of communication between people, particularly among Gen Z. That is why memes created and launched on this platform form not only trends in the social network, but also topics for communication, discourse, and influence on pop culture.
References
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