ALT TIKTOK
22 June 2020

TikTok is thankfully getting weirder no matter if you call it elite, alt or deep. Just follow the officialgeicoinsurance.

Ever since the messed up Trump rally in Tulsa on the weekend i have been intrigued by the entire alt, elite, deep or whatever thingy on TikTok. The obvious thing that somewhat unifies all these different subtrends is the distinction to the so called straight TikTok aka the obvious, the "normal", the boring.

ALTERNATIVE AESTHETICS

Not very surprisingly i am not the only one who quickly tries to catch up. There is a bunch of mainstream media articles trying to get a grip. Taylor Lorenz in the New York Times 12 days ago: What Is Elite TikTok? Buzzfeed at the end of may: Explaining Alt TikTok For The Millennials In The Room. And thankfully: TikTok Is Only Getting Weirder.

Not sure though if straight and alt necessarily links to queer content like Mashable suggests: Also known as “Gay TikTok,” “Beans TikTok,” or “Elite TikTok,” the subsect rejects mainstream trends in favor of surreal humor and alternative aesthetics. Shaped by the dredges of emo culture and the heavy Dadaist influence of its millennial predecessors, Alt TikTok embodies all that is queer. 

I, for one, celebrate the progression of TikTok as a serious outlet for multitude forms of cultural expressions in the tradition of the weird – in an evermore accelerated environment of endlessly spinning cycles of signs and symbols and a pleasantly impenetrable cacophony of signifier and signified where the next chasm takes you somewhere completely else in this multidimensional reference system of the now. Half digested, spiced and spitted.