TikTok Cultures in the United States

Trevor Boffone, Trevor Boffone

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000602197
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Popular Culture
• Index: Social Sciences

TikTok Cultures in the United States examines the role of TikTok in US popular culture, paying close attention to the app's growing body of subcultures.

Featuring an array of scholars from varied disciplines and backgrounds, this book uses TikTok (sub)cultures as a point of departure from which to explore TikTok's role in US popular culture today. Engaging with the extensive and growing scholarship on TikTok from international scholars, chapters in this book create frameworks and blueprints from which to analyze TikTok within a distinctly US context, examining topics such as gender and sexuality, feminism, race and ethnicity and wellness.

Shaping TikTok as an interdisciplinary field in and of itself, this insightful and timely volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of new and digital media, social media, popular culture, communication studies, sociology of media, dance, gender studies, and performance studies.

7 Trans TikTok Sharing Information and Forming Community

Elle Rochford and Zachary D. Palmer

DOI: 10.4324/9781003280705-10

• User 1 – “[H]ow did you get your family to support you my family hated me because of it (closed eyes frown emoji)”
• User 2 – “You’ve got a big global family baby lean on us you are loved and supported…”
• User 3 – “honey im your family, the trans community are your family and we all love you very much”

The above quotes are pulled from the comment section of Ted Kincaid’s¹ viral TikTok on parenting as a trans man.² In the video, Kincaid responds to a commenter who claims Kincaid’s children deserve pity as they must be incredibly confused. Kincaid videos himself asking his children a series of basic questions about who he is, who he is to them, and what it means to be trans. His children respond simply and as if they are bored by the conversation. Commenters leave messages of support or anger. Interactions such as this one suggest that TikTok can be a critical site for community, a space where users support each other and act as an extended, chosen family. However, in our study of 450 videos and comments, we found very few exchanges like the one above. The potential for trans TikTok to be a community-building space drew us to the platform, but ultimately the structure of the platform and the reward system for content discourages nuanced conversations and sustained exchanges of solidarity and support.

The Internet has long been a space for trans people to form community, facilitating connections that geography and social stigma might otherwise prevent. In the early days of the Internet, trans people connected with one another in chatrooms and shared resources and explored their identities through GeoCities websites.³ Later, YouTube and Tumblr became the dominant online spaces for the transgender community, with some scholars referring to Tumblr as a “trans technology,” due to its characteristics of “multiplicity, fluidity, and ambiguity.”⁴ Both YouTube and Tumblr were platforms for trans discourse through comments and re-blogging, in which users shared others’ posts and could add their own commentary. On Tumblr, popular hashtags such as #ftm, #mtf, and #trans* provided a repository of the conversations on these topics and a “safe space” for education, self-expression, and connection. On YouTube, personal transition vlogs became their own genre, with their “talking head”⁵ style facilitating a sense of intimacy and community while sharing “embodied trans knowledges”⁶ about the transition process.

Tumblr has since been abandoned by the trans community (and many others) due to bans on adult content that were often selectively used to police trans content.⁷ YouTube has also declined in popularity, with TikTok now the ascendant social media platform. TikTok estimates it will have over 70 million active users in 2021 in the United States alone.⁸ Trans TikTok, unlike YouTube and Tumblr, is distributed overwhelmingly to cis users. TikTok offers financial and social opportunities for trans creators, but also offers cis audiences new insights into the lived experiences of trans people. TikTok, as compared to Instagram and YouTube, favors diversity and relatability which expands who can be a top influencer and have the potential to earn millions.⁹ This is important as trans people frequently experience employment discrimination especially if they belong to a marginalized racial group.¹⁰ Moreover, for many cis people, social media may be their only or first window into the lives of trans people. Cis users can consume trans content on their own terms from the comfort and safety of their phones.

There is certainly trans content on TikTok and a large trans user base, but how do users create community and what does this community look like? If Tumblr was a “trans technology,” how might we characterize TikTok with its extremely short videos and notorious (and inscrutable) algorithm? Recent work on “TransTok” celebrates the revolutionary acts of trans creators and is beginning to explore trans comedy and community.¹¹ We add to this discussion by unpacking the possibilities and limitations of community on TikTok. In this chapter, we examine the trans community on TikTok through content analysis of posts and associated comments from eight trans influencers as well as posts from the “trans” hashtag. We find that, in part due to the structure of the TikTok algorithm and what it rewards, many trans videos are geared toward cisgender audiences. Additionally, since controversy drives engagement, trans creators utilizing transphobic humor or directly responding to transphobic trolls are often the most popular videos. Thus, TikTok facilitates trans content but rarely trans community. Instead, the goal for many trans creators appears to be about affirmation, engagement, and fun.

Data and Methods

To explore the trans community on TikTok, we performed a content analysis as it is well suited to analyzing visual data as well as text.¹² We collected and analyzed 450 posts from eight influencers who identify as trans or non-binary and the top posts using the hashtag “trans.” We began data collection on May 7, 2021 and collected the 50 most recent publicly available posts from each influencer. We also collected and analyzed the first ten comments on each post, as well as the first ten replies to each of those ten comments. Here, “first” refers to the order in which the comments are listed when opened by the researcher. Comments and replies are not necessarily displayed chronologically or by popularity. It appears the algorithm partially randomizes the order (for instance, opening the comments for the same video may result in different top comments). It seems priority is given to comments by verified users, popular comments, and comments the creator replies to; however, this is not consistent. For each comment and post, we collected metadata such as the post’s username, date, number of likes, number of comments/replies, caption, etc. Users were given pseudonyms.

We sought variation in our sample regarding gender identity by selecting a mix of trans men, trans women, and non-binary/genderqueer users. Sampling the “trans” hashtag allows us a broad overview of the types of users engaging in conversation about trans identity and content that are created under the hashtag. Our research pays close attention to racial identity both in our sampling and analysis. We also include users with a variety of followers, though all can be characterized as “meso” or “macro” level influencers—that is, they have greater than 10,000 or 1 million followers, respectively.¹³ See Table 1 for a description of our cases, including demographics based on user’s self-descriptions (either in their videos or bios) (Table 7.1).

Table 7.1 Demographics and data

Case (pseudonyms)	Gender identity	Race/ethnicity	#likes	#followers
Charlie	Non-binary	Black	989.5K	49.2K
Coco	Trans femme	AAPI/Latina	244.6M	14.1M
Jason	Trans masc	White	8.4M	451.1K
Kai	Non-binary	White	35M	643.8K
Ray	Trans masc	Black	2.9M	178.9K
Sammy	Trans masc	White	49M	1.9M
Scarlett	Trans femme	Black	7M	532.7K
Tara	Trans femme	AAPI	48M	776.4K
Hashtag	N/A	N/A	19.4B views	N/A

To analyze our data, we use comprehensive memoing. Memoing in qualitative work refers to the practice of taking detailed and systematic notes which allow researchers to produce intellectual capital and increase abstract thinking and the connection of concepts.¹⁴ We began with descriptive memoing, which involves taking detailed notes describing the content. We then moved to thematic memoing examining themes, motifs, symbols, and common ideas that appeared in both the raw data and within our descriptive memos. Continuous memoing and meta-memoing (to memo about memoing) results in new codes, themes, and coding strategies.¹⁵ By utilizing repeated memoing, we were able to isolate three key themes: the centering of cis audiences, the crucial role of transphobia in boosting content and creators, and the focus on individual goals versus community-building.

Characterizing Trans TikTok

YouTube was the first space in which trans people widely produced and consumed video content, with transition videos being the main type of content in that space.¹⁶ In these videos, people documented their physical and social transitions and engaged in communities of support with other trans people. The videos by trans creators on TikTok, however, are of a very different nature and appeared to fulfill a very different purpose. Instead of a singular, specific genre of trans videos, TikTok content tends to primarily conform to the conventions of TikTok while potentially putting a trans spin on popular trends such as “glow-up” videos (in which users trace a transformation over time to being more conventionally attractive), lip-syncs, make-up tutorials, and comedy sketches.

Some creators make content that focuses on their trans identities, such as Jason, who makes humorous videos about being a trans man and his relationship with his trans girlfriend. Coco’s “thirst trap” videos frequently highlight the fact that she is trans, and she often includes jokes about being “born a boy” or “dude.” Sammy’s content often directly discusses his experiences as a trans man who has given birth. For others, however, being trans is something that remains in the background, sometimes quite literally. For example, Tara primarily records dancing and lip-sync videos, but does so with a large trans flag in the background. Similarly, Charlie’s content focuses on comedy skits where they play characters of all genders and, while their skits often focus on being queer or gay, they do not explicitly discuss their gender identity beyond the pronouns in their bio.

As opposed to the directly educational content often found in YouTube transition videos, such as discussing the process of starting hormone replacement therapy, the TikToks we analyze only indirectly include educational information—typically communicating through humor. For instance, Scarlett pokes fun at the difficulties of dating while trans. Rarely are these videos in conversation with others within the community, beyond “duet” videos where users record a video, often involving singing, dancing, or lip synching, that runs simultaneously alongside a video from another user. These duet videos, however, are rarely (if ever) related to being trans. Instead of being for education or connection, the purpose of many of these videos primarily seems to be affirmation and fun. Exchanges of support like the one that opens this chapter are not common. Conversations in the comments are often difficult to follow. Replies are nested but users may comment responses starting new threads or reply to the wrong comment. Comments and replies are not presented by like or chronologically so users new to the comment section may respond to something that had already been resolved or misunderstand the comment they were responding to. Nuanced conversations are all but impossible and misunderstandings quickly escalate, but misunderstandings drive engagement so there is little incentive for TikTok to redesign.

A Window for Cis People into Trans Worlds

• User 1 – “[S]aying you can’t tell isn’t a compliment so don’t say that guys”
• User 2 – “[O]bviously there’s nothing wrong with being trans LOL. I mean I can’t rly say what is and isn’t offensive bc I’m not trans but I think ppl mean that for some ppl you can definitely tell, but I think that the majority of trans people have the same goal- to look like their destined gender!”
• User 3 – “Huh??? I had a friend who was trans and he loved when people told him that. They’re just saying they couldn’t tell that he isn’t cis”

The above exchange takes place in the comments of Deforestation’s comedy video. In the video, he uses a trending sound, “my body different,” to explain to an imagined woman why he can’t “hook up” right now. Deforestation is a conventionally attractive man and the video receives a number of comments from users shocked he was trans. Some users attempt to educate cis users on why their “compliments” may be offensive. Trans influencers with the highest follower counts can achieve such large amounts of followers in part because they are able to appeal to cis users. It is statistically unlikely that the majority of Coco’s 14.1 million followers are also transgender. For those invested in generating engagement and large audiences, appealing to cis users is a necessity. In fact, much of the content we analyze seems designed for cis audiences with limited knowledge of the LGBTQ+ community rather than trans or queer people. And, based on the comments, many of the consumers of trans TikTokers’ videos are cisgender. Though it is not always possible to distinguish users’ identities based on their comments, many identify themselves as cis as a lead-in to questions about the trans experience or thanking the creator for educating them. For instance, “You are making such an important contribution to your whole movement,” one user comments on Jason’s post from Trans Day of Remembrance, “you’ve taken a challenging situation and turned it into something really great.” Allies regularly thank creators for being “inspirational,” and for sharing their stories. Others comment asking for clarification of commonly used terms in the trans community like...