THE VIBES ARE OFF: TRACING VIRAL TARGETED THEORIES ACROSS TIKTOK

Abstract

The social media and short video streaming app TikTok has grown exponentially in the past four years. This exploratory research project outlines and defines a new kind of viral phenomenon taking place on TikTok: that of the targeted theory. Targeted theories are amateur investigations of an individual creator based on an—often mundane—activity recorded in a TikTok video. Targeted theories are often undergirded by mini-moral panics, charging targets with being kidnappers, killers, fakers, cheaters, etc. Targeted theories are related to online harassment; in many cases they constitute a type of harassment. They are also related to conspiracy theories, but are distinct from them in that targeted theories accuse an individual, rather than a group, of duplicity. How do TikTok’s platform affordances create an environment that is (or is not) especially hospitable for targeted theorizing? How are the identities of targeted creators who are marginalized exploited and even weaponized as part of targeted theorizing? This project tackles these questions by tracing the rise and fall of three case studies of targeted theories on TikTok, and the normative and critical discourses that emerge around them.