How TikTok has captured a generation

It's meme culture made manifest in an ideal medium for it

TikTok.
(Image credit: Illustrated | TikTok, iStock/fongfong2)

On the surface it doesn't seem like much. It's just another clip from TikTok, the wildly popular app on which users lip sync, pontificate, flirt, dance, and share in short video clips. This one features a young woman pointing to some text on screen which asks a question: does this summer feel really weird to anyone else?

When I posted the clip to my Instagram feed, numerous friends responded with something to the effect of "yes, totally!" One suggested that this was a quintessentially modern feeling — a kind of listlessness or aimlessness endemic to a post-industrial world.

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Navneet Alang

Navneet Alang is a technology and culture writer based out of Toronto. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, New Republic, Globe and Mail, and Hazlitt.