black tiktok creators' strike

[hitchhiker]

A fascinating story at the intersection of cultural appropriation, internet virality and real-world rewards. Black TikTok users have been consistently generating some of the most viral content on TikTok, and then watching while white people become famous, and in some cases rich, for copying the videos. This came to a head last month when they collectively decided not to create dances for the new Megan Thee Stallion hit single "Thot Shit".

Earlier this June, Megan Thee Stallion’s “Thot Shit” was poised to take over TikTok. It’s compulsively danceable and full of quotable “Hot Girl Summer”-isms, but a scroll through the song’s official sound on the app unveils a wasteland of mediocre lip-syncs and unimaginative — to say the least — dance trends.

-- Vox

Tired of not receiving credit for their creativity and original work — all while watching white influencers rewarded with millions of views performing dances they didn't create — many Black creators on TikTok joined a widespread strike last week, refusing to create any new dances until credit is given where it's due.

-- NPR

As such, one Black creator decided to get quite…creative. Megan Thee Stallion’s recent single “Thot Shit” is definitely the type of song that lends itself to a TikTok dance craze. Of course, the cream culture vultures were circling above, waiting to swoop in and recreate a video originated by a Black creator without giving them any credit. However, TikToker @theericklouis came up with a master plan. Look at this brilliance:

The video begins with Meg’s bars and it appears @theericklouis is about to bust out a quick 8-count. But...plot twist! “Sike, this app would be nothing without Blk people,” he captioned the video at the end.

Welp! It’s a natural progression to this mess—after all, it’s the Black TikTokers’ creativity that inspires the white theft in the first place. Leaning all the way into their unseasoned and uninspired unoriginality, white TikTokers aired their regularly scheduled appropriation programming and copied the “dance” unironically, with the assumption that the dance dupe was legit.

-- The Root

The “strike” doesn’t have creators leaving the platform or even staying off of the app. Instead, Black creators who might normally contribute dances for the hot new song are sitting back and pointing to what happens when they’re not around. (Predictably: not a lot.)

-- Tech Crunch

TikTok has been called out in the past for treating Black creators unfairly and has been accused of suppressing their content. In searches for viral dances made by Black users, for example, the algorithm often prioritizes white creators’ copies of them, according to a report from NBC News.

-- The Guardian

This exposes the next problem. If TikTok doesn’t promote the Black content creators on the app, but consistently promotes their white counterparts, the exposure rate is neither equal nor fair. TikTok’s algorithm is the sole controller of what gets placed on a user’s homepage — referred to as their “For You” page — when they first install the app and continue to use it. If its “For You” page fails to place Black creators and originators at the forefront, and the white creators given the spotlight fail to give credit where credit is due, it’s easy to see why Black creators are feeling snubbed.

-- Revolt

Louis pointed out that TikTok's algorithm has exceedingly worked to uplift white influencers like Rae and Charli D'Amelio, who amassed millions of followers by appropriating dances created by Black TikTokers. Because content creation is now a career of its own, Black creators are demanding they be taken seriously and compensated for their contributions to the app. "Why do we have to go as far as begging to be seen and valued?" Louis said. "We bring so much range. We make the trends. We set the tone on that app, and there's no disputing it, no arguing — it's white folks that benefit off of the work and the labor that we do. So what it really is is a labor conversation." Beyond credit, many TikTok users rely on the platform as their main source of income, which warrants a conversation about potential health-insurance distribution and other work benefits afforded to those with traditional jobs.

-- Pop Sugar

The strike has surely made the point that without Black choreographers, we have no viral dance craze to a song of the summer. But in the process of making that point, Black people have still been creating the TikTok entertainment surrounding this song. TikToks of Black people making fun of white dances have been going viral. Even some TikToks of Black folks faking as if they were about to choreograph something have been copied by white people as if it were a real dance trend. And all the excitement surrounding the whole thing even had some people joking about re-downloading TikTok to follow along. But let’s be clear: TikTok is commodifying the amount of time people spend on the app, so for their bottom line a view is a view whether the content is critical of the app’s culture or not. The strike essentially showed that TikTok is so intertwined with Black culture that the system is fueled by what Black people are doing and what they refuse to do.

-- Teen Vogue

The TikTok strike truly is amazing b/c it shows not only how US pop culture is built on stealing from Black people, but how the music industry depends on this cycle of theft & white washing in order to monetize the music.

-- Cosmopolitan quoting Bree Newsome

In the past, Megan Thee Stallion’s music has been a powerhouse, driving viral choreography on the platform with hits like “Savage,” “Body,” and “WAP.”

“Savage” has been used in more than 22 million TikToks, “Body” in 1.5 million, and “WAP” more than 4 million.

But “Thot S—-” has so far only garnered 165,000 videos.

-- NBC

As the strike continues, some users have been posting videos lamenting how different their experience on the app is without Black dance creators.

"When are the Black creators finishing their strike?" a voice-over says in one video. "This app isn't fun anymore."

-- NPR

As Twitter user @JasmineSW3 pointed out, however, calling this a “strike” may not be a fair description as “plenty of Black creators are making dances, they’re just doing it under their own sound.” Thus, white creators looking to copy are unable to find the dance “because they don’t really support the Black people on that app.”

And the dances that do make there way under the official sound are too complicated for them to water down or replicate 😭

-- Complex

Comments

[amaebi]

My thumbs are held for liberators justice.

[hitchhiker]

inshallah

[cjsmith]

Wow, it’s eerie seeing this this morning after our conversation last night!

[hitchhiker]

hah, yeah!

[minoanmiss]

I hope the people whining "when will the strike end" catch a clue. The whole situation is sadly unsurprising.

[hitchhiker]

yeah, same, though it also does mean that people sat up and noticed who was generating all their content! i hope that translates into some actual credit down the line.