Really good those real-life essays. This nails what I was getting at on the other tik-tok thread, and how the algorithm accelerates personality templates. The machine allocating masks ...,
“Ultimately, TikTok’s most unique feature is its algorithm, which could fling your content onto any stranger’s feed, instead of restricting it to those who follow you. This arbitrariness, the inability to anticipate your audience, may incentivize creators to cater to the lowest common denominator. Poarch’s goal, it seems, is to abstract her face into something as blank and universally appealing as the iconic yellow smiley. In her book Theory of the Gimmick, the cultural and literary critic Sianne Ngai argues that the seemingly-innocuous smiley expresses “the face of no one in particular,” embodying “an uncanny personification of the collectively achieved abstractions of the capitalist economy.” Invented to boost morale at an insurance company, the icon transcends language and context, seemingly including everybody but also becoming creepy, even oppressive, in its all-inclusivity. Similarly, Poarch’s facial choreography is sanitized of almost all particularity: There is no storyline, so it is legible across all genders, ages, and ethnicities. In fact, in several TikToks, she imitates emojis lined up on the top of the screen — “Angry Face,” “Zany Face,” “Face with Tears of Joy” — stripping all else from the frame with her usual “Face Zoom” filter. “I think you are definitely being held captive by TikTok,” one person wrote on her original “M to the B” video.”