Tag Archives: TikTok

New Years Grapes

Text: Every New Year’s Eve before midnight, you sit under a table and you eat 12 individual grapes, and supposedly it’s supposed to make it so that you find love or you make like a wish that comes true. The informant thinks you have to eat them all either before it hits midnight or as it hits midnight. 

Context: Informant in 20, half white half pacific islander, born in Washington and now going to school in Southern California. She herself has never practiced this tradition. She saw it on TikTok and was like what is this? And then she saw more TikToks and was like, now I know.

Analysis: This tradition no longer has roots, it isn’t traveling in the same way other traditions used to before the internet, as we’ve talked about before in class. The brothers Grimm and other proponents of ethnonationalism would have a stroke. My informant is still a passive bearer, but not in the usual way, she didn’t learn it from a group she’s in and doesn’t know where it came from originally. But weirdly if you think about it she does still have a group and that group is TikTok, a large nebulous group but a group all the same. I, who does not use TikTok, did not know this tradition, or I wasn’t in the right algorithm to see it when it came to Instagram. The algorithm opens up a whole other part of the interaction between digital orality and folklore groups. Folklore no longer can be tracked by location but what you know does tell us things about how you interact with the digital space.

“Just a Little Something I Learned in the War”

Text: My good friend KH, who has never been in any war, has installed the line “Just a little something I learned in the war” as a personal signature, dropped after she performs an act of trivial competence. Two recent examples: following up a successful U-turn in her car, “Just a little something I learned in the war.” Another, she twisted off a stuck cap from a soda bottle with some difficulty and said, “Just a little something I learned in the war.” She uses the line straight-faced, without further commentary, which usually makes it even funnier.

Context: KH does not appear to have inherited the phrase from a parent or grandparent; she has identified social media (primarily TikTok) as the point of contact, where the formula has circulated as a stock comic move. 

Analysis: The catchphrase is a piece of folk speech that works through deliberate, comedic over-attribution: KH credits a tiny bit of everyday competence to a vast, unverifiable, fictitious, catastrophic past. The joke depends on both speaker and audience knowing there was obviously no war. The gap between the trigger (a U-turn, a bottle cap) and the dramatic framing is the entire setup. It’s like wider American comic phrases such as “Vietnam flashbacks,” “Back in ‘Nam,” “in the trenches,” and “old Army trick.” All these dresses something small in the language of something terrible and huge, for comedic effect. 

Slay

AP is a 20-year-old student from Austin, Texas. She is very internet savvy and speaks extensively in cultural and internet references. 

‘Slay’

AP-A word I use all of the time in different contexts is ‘slay’. I started saying it when it became a trend on TikTok and I use it to this day even though the trend has kinda died. I use it in every context because, well, everything is just so slay like, how could I not call it slay? Everything is slay to me. Every time I say slay I mean it in like an endearing almost cheering on kind of way, like oh girl you go slay that, or this is gonna slay. It’s just something that’s good or exciting or just has a light-hearted carefree vibe. 

ANALYSIS: The definition of the word slay means to strike and kill, but has evolved to hold a brand new meaning to modern youth and Queer culture. The popularity of the word slay in the modern context comes primarily from LGBTQ culture and speaking habits. At some point, people began using slay to signify excellence. Instead of saying an artist ‘killed’ their performance, they ‘slayed’ their performance. Terms like ‘slay’ and ‘yass’ stem from the ball subculture, and have been used there for decades. But these terms have been coined as ‘internet words’, and are used by many people outside of the LGBTQ community with no knowledge of their origin. There are mixed feelings about the increased use of Queer terms outside of the community. It signifies an improvement in LGBTQ acceptance culturally, with more people being open and interested in Queer language. It shows that LGBTQ culture no longer has to hide and has its place in the culture mainstream. However, the Queer community is often ignored as being the originators of these terms, instead with people crediting Tiktok or Twitter. The terms have become appropriated, and are barely even connected back to Queer culture anymore. Slay is a perfect example of the interesting phenomenon that we are facing, an exterior acceptance of Queer culture while erasing the culture’s proper history.  

No Bones Day

Context: Informant uses a social media platform known as ‘TikTok’. Tiktok allows users to follow other members, and view other member’s videos.

Background Information: Informant uses TikTok mostly to look at cute animal videos and follow current trends. Although Informant does not take TikTok very seriously, they enjoy playing into it a little for amusement.

Informant: “So TikTok, there’s this guy who posts this videos of his pug, and i can’t remember the pug’s name, but I think it’s noodle, or, something? Anyways, I follow this guy and he posts these videos of his pug and this is the oldest pug in the world, like, this an 18 year old dog or something,, she’s a tired girl, or boy, i don’t actually know what gender this pug is. Ok, but, he will post these videos when he wakes up his pug in the morning, and he stands them up, and the pug will either fall back down or it will stand on its own. And it’s so cute, and people will be like, if the dog, like, stands up, then it’s a ‘Bones Day’, but if it falls down it’s a ‘No Bones Day’. So, people will base their day on this little, incredible old pug. Cause’, if its a bones day then that’s like, “gotta get up and go and be determined and, work hard” and, if it’s a no-bones day, then like, you’re able to flop and take a rest and self-care day basically. Anyways, he got really popular and all these people were following him, and for a long time, for a while, people would just base their whole day on this pug.”

Thoughts: This is incredibly humorous, I don’t think anyone necessarily truly believed that the pug was able to forecast the day, however I don’t think that is the point. Folklore is full of looking at the physical world for advice and information on the future. By having a large amount of people support the psychic powers of this pug, the notion gains a sort of validity. There are lots of things uncertain in life, and it can be difficult balancing healthy self-care with determined hard work. by relying on this pug, people have a (semi-valid?) way of ‘knowing’ that they are balancing their life every day. ‘Noodle’ the pug serves as a comfort for people to feel like they are handling their life correctly, in accordance to their own needs for balance as well as society’s demands.

Cottagecore

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: student
Residence: La Habra, CA
Performance Date: 4/29/2020
Primary Language: English

An informant explains a growing online lesbian subculture.

Text:

Informant: Cottagecore is this, typically lesbian, ideal aesthetic where you want to live like in cottage in the woods. It’s very fairy-esque. You bake bread and wear paisley skirts. There’s a lot of gardening, living off the land, being off the grid for the good of your soul and the planet. It’s very “I want a fairy wife” kind of belief. There’s a lot of mushrooms and forest animals. It’s this lesbian fantasy that you’ll run away and leave the world behind and live this perfect story-book life with your wife.

Context: A friend was explaining to another friend what Cottagecore is. The informant is a member of the wlw community.

Thoughts:

Cottagecore is very popular subgroup/theme on TikTok. I’ve seen it a lot, and it has recently begun to spread to other social media apps like Twitter. I feel as though it is growing in popularity, in both the lesbian culture and more mainstream internet users, because it rejects the stressful aspects of modern society such as capitalism and the nine-to-five work day.