TikTok's addictive anti-aesthetic has already conquered culture
If Franz Kafka were to reconceive "The Metamorphosis" for our era, he might decide to ditch the novella in favor of a series of surreal TikToks — Gregor Samsa as eyes and mouth green-screened onto a picture of a roach jacked from the web.
Kafka is long gone. But thankfully, we have Kendria Bland, a Mississippi comedian who does a semiregular bit on TikTok about the travails of a pack of domestic roaches who like to party behind the refrigerator and sneak Popeyes when the humans aren't around. One defiant arthropod, Roachkeishiana, refuses to scuttle when the lights come on and crafts a wig out of hair she finds in the bathtub. "You know how many times I got stepped on?" she says with a haughty hair toss. "I'm still here."
The skits bring together a complex array of sight gags while winking at the tropes of 'hood films and sensationalist talk shows. But the production values couldn't be more lo-fi: Bland plays every role with different wigs and uses TikTok's editing tools to green-screen herself twerking on a kitchen table and fighting a pair of beetles. The crude special effects won't win her an Oscar, but on TikTok, perfection takes a backseat to wit.
Bland's comedy represents TikTok's promise. The app, which presents short-form videos in a frantic endless scroll, is governed by (famously creepy) algorithms that deliver posts to those deemed likely to enjoy them — which is how a one-minute cockroach skit by a comedian in Vossburg, Mississippi, can draw 1.3 million likes and be shared almost 90,000 times, including by me. (I am here for all cucaracha content.)
Despite — it harvests from its users. Just before Christmas, that ByteDance employees — already criticized for suppressing content such as — had taken an even more Orwellian turn, using location data to track journalists. Some in the U.S. have banned the app from their networks and numerous states prohibit it on . And a newly signed federal law has extended the ban to all government devices.
