TRENDING RESISTANCE: A STUDY OF THE TIKTOK #DEINFLUENCING PHENOMENON.

Abstract

Starting from January 2023, a new trend gained momentum on TikTok: It is called #deinfluencing, and it collects a series of videos which criticise the consumerist logic of the influencer industry and its tendency to overconsumption, as well as the platforms’ architectures that further fuel these processes. This contribution aims at investigating the #deinfluencing trend on TikTok to analyse to what extent it represents a form of resistance to issues of overconsumption and consumerism. I argue that the deinfluencing phenomenon is an example of how forms of resistance are becoming “trending”, that is, not only currently popular or widely discussed online, but also increasingly intertwined with the affordances and algorithmic nature of TikTok. The empirical research is based on a digital method approach and qualitative data analysis techniques. After collecting data from hashtags such as “#deinfluencing” and “#antihaul”, a content analysis aimed at highlighting the emerging themes in the trend has been performed. The results show that the deinfluencing trend is composed of three main categories of content: resistance; consumerist reappropriation; and trend-surfing. Ultimately, the analysis of the deinfluencing trend shows the different ways in which resistance becomes “trending”, meaning intertwined and progressively mitigated by the logic and architecture of TikTok. It is exactly in the trending nature of these forms of resistance that lies the highly controversial and potentially problematic nature of deinfluencing: a form of resistance to and through the platform’s logic, as well as to and through consumption.