There are a lot of conversations about the detriment TikTok poses to our ability to curate taste or enjoy art, but perhaps more important is the effect of this all-consuming app on our ability to appreciate different forms of cultural production.
TikTok has led to the rebirth of virality for a lot of older pop culture hits among younger generations, from the revival of Kate Bush to the more recent love for Janet Jackson’s early 2000s hit, “Someone to Call My Lover” (a great song). Like other trends, the popularity of each song or artist is ephemeral, changing with the cyclic fad machine. The constantly changing interests of the internet complicate our capacity for taste, and there is something to be said about its negative influence on our attention spans.
However, something less obvious about the consequences of TikTok on our taste is the ever-widening cultural gaps between Black and white listeners. When classic hits like “Someone to Call My Lover” or “Killing Me Softly With His Song” by Fugees briefly occupy the collective attention of TikTokers, the racial divide in music appreciation becomes far too clear.
These hits have a strong fan base in Black listeners and represent cultural icons, evoking a sense of familiarity and cultural connection. Janet Jackson and Fugees are renowned in Black culture and respected for their contributions. When non-Black listeners engage with these songs and artists on social media, however, it is often for the first time. This cross-racial exposure seems like it would inspire a meaningful appreciation of diverse music and cultures, especially in our increasingly global world, but it instead highlights America’s split cultural consciousness.
When white listeners engage with these popular songs, they often regard them as undiscovered gems that have hence gone unappreciated by the zeitgeist. This became most apparent to me in 2020 when “Killing Me Softly” became a trending sound on the app. For many Black users, this was a pleasant reentrance of the song into pop culture, but their white counterparts treated it as something new and shiny with little interest in its established history.
Instead of appreciating this Black classic, white users marveled at how “underrated” eight-time Grammy Award-winning Lauryn Hill was. There was a lack of respect for her artistry or the huge impact she had on music, relegating this song to referral as "the TikTok song” or, worse, the “Killing Stalking song.
The co-opting of such a meaningful, familiar work for Black audiences totally depreciates its culturally educational qualities. Rather, the cross-cultural dissonance between Black and white audiences is widened. What could stand to be a valuable opportunity for connection and appreciation for the way cultural production shapes different artistic landscapes becomes another instance of cultural alienation.
When Tupac’s “Keep Ya Head Up” went viral, a song clearly targeting Black women and identity, TikTok was again filled with white and other non-Black creators co-opting and trying to redefine its meaning rather than listening and appreciating the work for what it was.
Whether this unfortunate reaction to cross-cultural exposure is due to the need to meme-ify everything online or a result of thoughtless attachment to whatever’s trending, it is concerning. By disregarding previous recognition or cultural associations with an artistic work, white listeners treat their engagement with the piece as supreme and implicitly more important than that which came before.
