#[What I (hover-style:(text-rotate-z:30))+(text-style:"emboss")+(text-color:"#ff0050")[Tok] About When I (hover-style:(text-rotate-z:-30))+(text-style:"emboss")+(text-color:" #00f2ea")[Tok] About (text-size:5)+(hover-style:(text-style:"smear")+(text-color:#32CD32))[C0V1D]]<title|
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|reflection>[###Reflection
//Perhaps one of the most familiar aspects of working in academia through the pandemic was the astronomical increase in access to digital tools for teaching. Software, hardware, communication platforms, LMS features...you name, it was happening. But of course, simply providing access to new technology and systems rarely also provides the endpoint or solution to a given problem. In this case, there was, at the very least, the learning curve to figure out these new systems, and then the secondary curve of figuring out how to incorporate them into the classroom in a meaningful, effective way. Many instructors found themselves overwhelmed by this sudden influx of “opportunity,” not least given that it was offered with the tacit expectation that it be immediately, critically, and effectively incorporated into pedagogical praxis. I was asked many times to offer workshops, provide feedback, or give guidance to my colleagues on this front, given both my expertise in digital humanities, and (I suspect) that I am a classic Millennial. And for the most part, I was pleased to see my expertise recognized, and happy to help. (But as with all service, my helpfulness did eventually reach its limits).
//]
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|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This TikTok trend takes a sound clip from Eminem’s "Without Me," focusing on the lyrics “Now this looks like a job for me…”. In the trend, users post a scenario or phenomenon where some perceived expertise – whether gained through schooling, training, accident, or just personality – is needed. This is followed by a look straight to camera to lip sync with the line “now this looks like a job for me.” The job for me may be sincere (as in my example here) or it may ironically reference a job that the user does not actually want to do, but by chance and random quirks, is required or expected to do. //
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<video src='videos/BerriesCreamDH.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
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|reflection>[###Reflection
//In Fall 2021 I was 8 months pregnant with my second child. Our campus had reopened and I would be teaching in person for the first time since going online for emergency remote teaching in Spring 2020, nearly 18 months before. I spent the entire semester worried about contracting COVID, which, if I gave birth while having COVID, would necessitate being separated from my newborn for his own health and safety. Amidst this ever-hovering fear and ever-growing baby bump, TikTok exploded with the “Berries and Cream” trend, which brought back an esoteric Starburst ad campaign that ran in 2007, when I was an undergrad. The nostalgia and utter nonsense of the Little Lad Dance offered a much-needed moment of reprieve and joy. At the same time, I can’t help but reflect on how much has changed from when I first performed those choreographed movements 15 years ago, as an undergraduate, to performing them now, as an assistant professor.
//]
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|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//I remain at a loss for how this trend became a trend, but the “Little Lad” song and dance about Berries and Cream originated in a Starburst ad campaign that ran in 2007. The original ad has something of a cult status, thanks to both its odd brand of comedy and its after-life on YouTube. For a few weeks in Fall 2021 – primarily the month of September – the little lad dance and berries and cream song became an outrageous trend on TikTok, as users cut some of the key phrases from the song – “berries and cream,” “little lad,” and “little lad dance” in particular – into popular songs and popular TikTok sounds. With new “Berries and Cream” remixes appearing daily, users began joking that the prevalence of the Berries and Cream trend on your FYP (for you page) was inversely correlated to your mental health; the more Berries and Cream on your FYP, the worse your mental health was. While this is not my only contribution to the trend on Tiktok, it is the only Berries and Cream video in this piece, and features me doing the traditional Little Lad Dance, but changing the lyrics to “Digital humanities / Digital Humanities / I’m a professor of Digital humanities.” //
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<video src='videos/ShowmanChallenge.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
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|reflection>[###Reflection
//Although TikTok is popularly known for its dance challenges, that is rarely an area of the app that I participate in – as the original caption to this video states, I am not and never have been a dancer. However, this dance challenge was one that I had to try out for its high energy, celebratory, joyful tone. And what moment was more high energy and joyful than turning off Zoom and coming back to the classroom? Sure there were still challenges to come and anxieties to address, but this dance and its accompanying lyrics of “we will come back home / we will come back home / home again” perfectly encapsulated the joy I felt at finally coming back to the classroom and to my students and to my office and to my campus.
//]
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|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This TikTok trend is called the Greatest Showman Challenge, and challenges users to dance the choreography from the 2017 film The Greatest Showman’s final song, “From Now On.” Although many users simply did the dance challenge as a straightforward dance challenge, some (myself included) embraced the narrative of the song and the celebratory tone of the choreography and added a scenario to the dance so that it became both a dance challenge and a reaction. //
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[|name>[Sarah Whitcomb Laiola] is an assistant professor of Digital Culture and Design at Coastal Carolina University, where she also serves as coordinator for the Digital Culture and Design program. She holds a PhD in English from the University of California, Riverside, and specializes in new media poetics, visual culture, and contemporary digital technoculture with a focus on feminism and anti-racism in these spaces. Her most recent peer-reviewed publications appear in <a href="https://jitp.commons.gc.cuny.edu/back-in-a-flash-critical-making-pedagogies-to-counter-technological-obsolescence/">//Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy//</a>, <a href="http://hyperrhiz.io/hyperrhiz21/list-explain-think/1-teaching-cultural-semiotics.html">//Hyperrhiz//</a>, and <a href="https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism/vol60/iss2/6/">//Criticism//</a>. She is the co-founder and managing editor of <a href="https://www.instagram.com/filterinstazine/">//Filter//</a>, an Instagram-based venue for electronic literature and textual art. You can find her tweeting at <a href="https://twitter.com/DrSarathena192">@DrSarathena192</a> and making TikToks at <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@idk_my_dcdprof">`@idk_my_dcdprof`</a>.]<bio|
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|stmt>[//|name>[What I Tok About When I Tok About C0V1D] is a meditation on the last two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, performed through TikTok videos. Like many Millennials, I joined TikTok in 2020, shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic forced us into our homes and rendered “socializing” an entirely virtual, online, screen-based activity. While at first I joined as a way to escape from the doom-scroll that had taken over my other social media outlets – Twitter and Facebook especially – I soon found that TiKTok’s particular brand of procedural, videographic memes provided an interesting space for self-expression. I began making memetic videos as a way to communicate, cope with, and respond to the myriad challenges of existing as a woman, a mom, a partner, a caretaker, a Millennial, and an early-career academic during COVID. Leaning into the relative anonymity afforded by TikTok’s FYP algorithm, at times these videos offered a vehicle to express my frustration and anger at institutional policies that made it extremely difficult to protect myself and my family during the pandemic. More often, though, I made TikTok videos in the same spirit through which I joined the platform – as moments of escapist fun.
This piece is a curated selection of TikTok videos that I made over the last two years, all reacting, in some way, to challenges of life during COVID. Collected here, they offer an account of the pandemic period that is necessarily personal, and almost autobiographical. Rather than organize the videos into a chronological account of the period, however, I’ve set them to randomly generate when the player selects the “New Video” button. In this way, they offer glimpses of this period unbound by time, a reflection of the experiences of timelessness within both the pandemic, and the TikTok platform. Despite this apparent timelessness, we are not outside of time, and the videos feature markers of temporality in my own embodied transformations – hair growth and cuts, weight gain and loss, and a pregnancy. The interface is designed in a way to visually reference the proliferation of screens through which we operated during the pandemic, with the top-level “menu,” in particular, recalling the black boxes of a Zoom call. With each video I've included a textual reflection that offers some background on the video itself, as well as an option to read more about the specific TikTok trend that the video uses. Finally, as a semi-autobiographical account of the pandemic, I pull from traditions of poetic life writing under constraint, and have included 33 total videos and reflections, one for each year that I had been alive as of 2020, when the pandemic began.//]
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<video src='videos/3rdYearReview.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
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|reflection>[###Reflection
//When we first started adjusting our institutional, professional lives to the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the most resounding cries was to rethink institutional temporality that celebrates and rewards the ability to constantly work. In response to this, many institutions, my own included, started adopting policies of temporal extension – extended time for getting grades or assessment reports in, or extensions to the tenure clock. As a junior faculty member who was suddenly having to redistribute my work time to care for my partner, my kids, and myself, I could certainly use this extra time. However, it’s a bit of a catch-22 since prolonging the tenure clock also prolongs the salary raise and job security that comes with tenure. And so…even as COVID disrupted so many institutions and so many of our temporal norms, my own tenure clock kept ticking and in Spring 2021, 1 year into the pandemic, I underwent 3rd-year review.//]
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|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This trend began as the Hope Challenge, where Black TikTok makers would reference the Black movie trope of ending a movie with a series of freeze frames that show where each major character ended up (for example: Coach Carter, Remember the Titans, or Coley High). In the original version of the meme, users used the freeze frame, slow zoom, and black and white filter accompanied by the song “Hope” to provide the “where are they now” update, a direct reference to film Coach Carter. Often this update would poke fun at the very human experience of knowing a “right way” forward, and choosing to do something different, or of expecting things to happen one way, and then they actually happen another (usually worse) way. As the trend spread, many users of the Tiktok community called for racially sensitive versions of the meme, to avoid white-washing the trend and losing its connection to Black culture and Black movies. In the white version of the trend, which I use here, Hope is replaced with Simple Minds’ Don’t You (Forget About Me) to mimic the ending of The Breakfast Club.//
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<video src='videos/Concussion.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
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|reflection>[###Reflection
//One of the hardest things that I have had to manage as a junior faculty member is the expectation of service, and over-volunteering. I imagine I am not alone in this, particularly as a woman, since we are both socialized and institutionally expected to serve – phenomena that are exponentially greater for women of color. That the expectation to serve is coupled with the requirement to institutional service, and the implementation of service “opportunities” that align with things like improving academic equity or enhancing student experience…well, it makes it that much harder to turn down, even though less service means more time and energy for teaching, research, creative work, and personal life. I made this TikTok to laugh at myself when, just shy of 3 months postpartum and still in the throes of newborn sleep deprivation, I volunteered to run a virtual Douglass Day transcription event for our students.//]
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|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This TikTok trend uses a sound clip from the 1995 movie, Clueless. In the clip, Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone) is worried that her friend Tai (Brittany Murphy) might have a concussion, so tells Elton (Jeremy Siston) “If it’s a concussion you have to keep her conscious, ok? Ask her questions!” Elton asks Tai, “What’s seven times seven?” to which Cher, exasperated, responds “Stuff she knows!” The sound has been revived on TikTok, where it circulates as a meme for communicating situations where you should know what’s going on, yet apparently don’t. //
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<video src='videos/GoodForYourMask.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
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|reflection>[###Reflection
//I made this TikTok on my first day back to a fully re-opened campus, in Fall 2021, 18 months after we went online for emergency remote teaching in Spring 2020. Like many other schools across the country, my state regional university was beholden to state policies for things like masks and vaccines, such that as summer turned to fall and the semester crept upon us, we had no vaccine or mask mandate for public campus spaces. And so we prepared to reopen with a “mask optional” policy. I was eight months pregnant at this point, and very worried about contracting COVID while pregnant, so imagine my relief when, at 10:30 pm the night before the semester officially started, my phone pinged with an email alert from the University President announcing that, at the (nearly literal) eleventh hour, the Board of Trustees voted to institute a mask mandate for Fall 2021. While I anticipated some pushback, I was so pleased to see that students willingly, correctly, and (as far as I could tell) nonchalantly wore their masks throughout campus buildings. //]
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|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This TikTok video uses a sound that remixes Oliva Rodrigo’s break-up pop hit, “Good For You,” so that it only features the positive lyrics of the song. Where the original lyrics of the chorus read: “Good for you, you look happy and healthy / Not me, if you ever cared to ask / Good for you, you’re doing great out there without me, baby / God, I wish that I could do that,” this remix only features “Good for you, you look happy and healthy / Good for you, you’re doing great.” Before this remix, “Good for You” was the second of Rodrigo’s pop songs to become viral TikTok sounds and memes, following her breakout hit “Drivers License.” It is also worth noting that I am not alone in using this remix to promote responsible public health measures; President Biden invited Rodrigo to the White House to promote COVID-19 vaccines amongst young people, and some of the media they shot featured this TikTok remix of her song. //
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<video src='videos/Hernando.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
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|reflection>[###Reflection
//Just before Spring Break 2022, the Board of Trustees announced that our campus would be removing its mask mandate. For some, this news had been a long time coming; for others, it was far too soon. I had been teaching remotely as part of my maternity adjustments, and was due to return to on campus work right after Spring Break. Though I trusted my vaccine and had, at this point, already contracted and recovered from COVID, I also knew that for me – as I would coming home from campus to a partner, an infant, and a toddler – there was no question as to the continued presence of a mask in my face-to-face teaching. Besides the science supporting the efficacy of masks, at this point of the pandemic, I also needed the almost talismanic source of bravery and protection provided by the KN95.
//]
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|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This TikTok trend uses a sound from the 2021 Disney animated film, Encanto. In the clip referenced by the sound, Bruno, the Madrigal family’s estranged uncle and titular character in the film’s hit song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” reveals to Maribel that he has been helping to fix the Casita, by patching various holes in the walls, even though the rats living in the walls scare him. As he says to Maribel “All the patching is done by Hernando.” As there is no one in the family named Hernando, Maribel then asks “Who is Hernando?” to which Bruno, now wearing a hood over his head, replies in a different voice “I am Hernando and I’m scared of nothing!” In this moment of the film, we realize that fearful, anxious Bruno has created a brave, fearless alter-ego, Hernando, so that he can continue caring for his family and his family’s home. On TikTok, the sound is used to share versions of users’ own “alter-egos,” who perform various tasks they would rather not do. //
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|reflection>[###Reflection
//One of the most frustrating elements of returning to the classroom in Fall 2021 was the limitation to classroom autonomy – particularly around issues of public and personal health – put in place by my state and institution. When our school announced that we would be reopening in person for the Fall semester, many of us hoped that that would be with all the same precautions originally in place to mitigate the spread of COVID on our campus – masks, sanitation, social distancing, etc. But for us, the school was set to reopen with none of these precautions in place, and faculty were not empowered to enforce masks or distancing practices in our classrooms or offices (though we could move our office hours to Zoom). At the time, I was 7 months pregnant, very worried about contracting COVID while pregnant, and a TikTok trend for laughing at apparent betrayals was making the rounds. So I made this as a kind of scream into the algorithmic void. Luckily, the night before our Fall 2021 semester started, the Board of Trustees met to institute a mask mandate in public campus spaces, including classrooms. //]
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|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This is one of the many TikTok sounds that revitalizes an Internet Classic – in this case, a viral vine from 2014 by Ben Taylor. The dialogic exchange goes like this: “I brought you frankincense” / “Thank you” / “And I brought you myrrh–” / “Thank you” / “MyrrhDER!” / “Judas! NO!” This exchange mashes up two stories from Christianity, the gifts of the Magi to the baby Jesus – specifically, frankincense and myrrh – and Judas’ betrayal of Jesus before his death, playing with the shared sound of “myrrh” and “mur-” so that the second gift is not “myrrh,” as expected, but instead, “murDER.” On TikTok, this sound was virally trending through July and August 2021, and is used to communicate a betrayal. //
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<video src='videos/Maymester.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
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|reflection>[###Reflection
//One year into the pandemic, at the end of the Spring 2021 semester, I, like many of my colleagues, was exhausted. I was exhausted by the pandemic, by the constant worry, by teaching with minimal human connection between me and my students, by zoom and its black boxes…all of it was exhausting. I was also four months pregnant, with a baby due right in the middle of the Fall 2021 semester. In order to allow for a kind of leave in Fall, I redirected one course from my Fall load to Maymester – a 4-week super-condensed class, that I taught fully online and asynchronous. While ultimately this was the right call in that it meant my Fall was open for birth and recovery, the transition from Spring 2021 to Maymester was brutal, and all I wanted at the time was a break. //]
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|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This TikTok sound comes from a Halloween video posted by the Nebraska Humane Society’s TikTok account in October 2020. In the original video, someone off camera walks through the empty halls of the humane society and says, “Hey uh, not a lot going on around here lately, let’s just see what’s behind this door.” When they open the door in question, it reveals the Humane Society’s Halloween display: a skeleton on a bench. The visual reveal is accompanied by a spooky chord progression, and the speaker says “Noooo. Is there a better door around here, maybe?” In the trend, users reveal other scary things or things they’d like to avoid behind a door, often setting up a scenario via text to accompany the “Not a lot going on around here…” line. //
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|reflection>[###Reflection
//One of the biggest sources of conflict for me during the pandemic was trying to maintain boundaries to protect my own time and workload, while also being a supportive (pre-tenure) colleague. To support our move to online, virtual, and hybrid teaching, my university added a number of new platforms and tools to our learning management system, and implored faculty to try using them to improve the virtual classroom and learning experience for our students. Unsurprisingly, this led to many faculty feeling overwhelmed at the number of new things to learn, particularly given the implication that they learn and immediately begin applying these new tools. As one of the resident digital humanities faculty members (and, I suspect, a tech-comfortable Millennial), I was called upon many times to offer support and guidance to my colleagues and, by extension, our students. While I tried to help as often as I could, other times the assumption that I would and could help in this capacity was overwhelmingly frustrating, since my role in the university is not one of faculty support. //]
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|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This TikTok is one that I made late in the pandemic – in Spring 2022 – and uses a sound clip from the 2022 Netflix series Inventing Anna. The clip is taken from episode two, in a scene featuring Anna Delvey (Julia Garner) fighting with her boyfriend Chase (Sammer Usamami). In her iconically recognizable Russian / German hybrid accent, Delvey yells “I do not have time for this! I do not have time for you!” On TikTok, this sound is used to express frustrating, even maddening demands on your time. //
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<video src='videos/NobleQuest.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
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|reflection>[###Reflection
//In the middle of the Spring 2022, our university removed the mask mandate that had been in place since we reopened in Fall 2021. Unfortunately for me, I was just about to return to on campus teaching, following my online redirect for maternity leave. With a newborn at home and a three-year-old still unable to be vaccinated, I was not thrilled with returning to a workplace that had decided to remove the minimal public health policies that had been in place – and this was on top of the usual and predictable anxieties and discomfort that comes with returning to work postpartum. Add to this that I would be entering a mask-less classroom right after our students returned from their spring breaks…well, it was a lot. And so I made this TikTok, using the platform as a vehicle for communicating my frustration.//]
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|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This TikTok trend is about searching, and users imagine scenarios that require searching for something, then add this sound to the background which recalls questing soundtracks from games. The noble quests users typically go on are often tongue-in-cheek, and range from things like “on a noble quest to discover where men get the audacity,” or “on a noble quest to find one positive thing Marco Rubio has done for the state of Florida.” //
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<video src='videos/NoCamerasSadness.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
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|reflection>[###Reflection
//During the Fall semester of 2020, I, like many of my colleagues all over the country and world, taught entirely on Zoom. At the time, one of the biggest topics of conversation around Zoom was the equity issue of requiring cameras to be on as it assumes: that each student is comfortable sharing their personal space with others in the class; that each student has a safe place to share via camera; that each student’s internet connection and hardware are robust enough to support that much video coming in; the list goes on. Given my commitment to doing whatever I can to foster an inclusive and equitable learning environment for my students, I never required cameras to be on and made sure my students knew this. Of course, the flip side of this is that not requiring cameras to be on means that you are teaching to the apparent void of black zoom squares, which introduces its own demoralizing, even dehumanizing, effects. Because of my policy, many students opted out of having their cameras on and so I spent the semester (and the following Spring 2021 semester) teaching to silent, black squares, hoping but rarely ever knowing, that someone was on the side.
//]
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|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This Tiktok trend uses Beyoncé’s 2008 song, "Halo," as the soundtrack for an extremely dramatized scenario. While the song plays, users lay out a dramatic scenario via text, and film themselves in self-effected slow motion, eventually falling, collapsing under the emotional weight brought on by the scenario.
//
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<video src='videos/OfficeHoursStitch.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
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|reflection>[###Reflection
//Although we all have our pros and cons of using the Zoom platform for teaching, one of the most positive application of Zoom for me is office hours. When teaching a hands-on digital humanities class, particularly an entry level coding class, it is so helpful to be able to share screens and walk students through their code to address whatever issues they are having. What remains challenging, however, is balancing this helpful application of the platform with students’ privacy and preparedness to screen share or turn their cameras on for a one-on-one meeting. Perhaps most frustrating were the office hours sessions that remained camera-less throughout, and were conducted entirely via the chat feature. While these sessions were few, and I always try to respect students’ comfort levels with technology, this structure also introduced new, additional barriers to teaching and learning in a moment when it felt like I was constantly navigating other barriers.
//]
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|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This TikTok video is made using the duet feature to create a kind of conversational diptych. The right hand side features a reaction video created by other Tiktok users with the call to “duet this” and add a scenario to fit the reaction. I added the office hours scenario to create a video that looks like a group of students leaving office hours rather than share their screens and get help. //
]}
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<video src='videos/PlaugeLikeJagger.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
=||||
|reflection>[###Reflection
//After a year of fully virtual teaching, our campus announced that in Fall 2021 we would reopen and return to on-campus instruction. While this certainly opened the door for a lot of concern and even, at times, anxiety around issues like mask mandates, vaccination status, and variants, to finally be logging off Zoom and returning to teaching in person needed some celebration. The “plague” was far from over, as it would turn out, but we have to take our moments of reprieve as and when they are offered. //]
{
(link: "Read TikTok Explanation")[(t8n:"instant")(show:?explanation)]
|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This TikTok uses a “bardcore” or “medieval style” remix of Maroon Five’s 2010 song “Moves Like Jagger.” The remix from which this clip is taken comes from a YouTube video by Stantough who makes bardcore versions of popular songs. On TikTok, users dance to a celebratory situation as if they were in a medieval setting, often incorporating a green screen background and RenFaire-style costume. //
]}
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<video src='videos/TheChairService.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
=||||
|reflection>[###Reflection
//In August 2021, Netflix dropped a new series – The Chair. The show focused on the first woman of color department chair, Ji-Yoon Kim (Sandra Oh), of an English department at a fictional East Coast Ivy League school. Although the show failed at its supposed goal of centering a woman of color and her experiences in academia due to its preoccupation with the performatively inept Bill Dobson (Jay Duplass), there were nevertheless moments of systemic marginalization that women across academia could find familiarity with. Perhaps one of its most successful elements was the ways it deglamorized the position of department chair, a position that is often popularly hailed as a goal, a promotion, or a sign of having made it, but that many in academia know is an often thankless, service-heavy administrative position. And so who could not help but cheer when, at the end of the show, Ji-Yoon steps down to reclaim some space for herself?//]
{
(link: "Read TikTok Explanation")[(t8n:"instant")(show:?explanation)]
|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This TikTok trend uses a clip from Lucas Graham’s 2014 song “Mama Said.” In the trend, users create a situation of admonishment or judgemental questioning through text on the screen – “why do you do X?” or “you can’t do Y” – to which they respond [I do it anyway because] “Mama said that it was OK / Mama said that it was quite alright.” When the lyrics “Mama said…” begin, the video cuts from the user to an image of the role model or person who is filling the “mama” role, the person who said it was ok. To the beat of the lyrics in the song, this image should be overlaid with changing typographic text of the lyrics. Often, but not always, the image changes to show the role model in different scenes or positions.//
]}
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<video src='videos/ShantyTokPrep.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
=||||
|reflection>[###Reflection
//Perhaps the most innocent, escapist fun I’ve had on TikTok was the Woodchuck Revolution / Wellerman Sea Shanty crossover in early 2021. That’s all this really is: a moment of bubble gum pop fun, while setting up my Intro to Digital Humanities class for Spring 2021. In retrospect, perhaps the moment of fun – a moment with no ulterior motive, no underlying line of critique or anxiety – is the point, the thing that intervenes in and disrupts. //]
{
(link: "Read TikTok Explanation")[(t8n:"instant")(show:?explanation)]
|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This TikTok is one of a few that I contributed to the Woodchuck Revolution / Wellerman Sea Shanty narrative that developed across disparate points of Tiktok in early 2021. It begins with the Wellerman Sea Shanty, which was a trend that began at the end of 2020, when Nathan Evans (@nathanevanss) uploaded a video of himself singing the old sea shanty – “Soon May the Wellerman Come.” This original upload went viral, and soon other creators began remixing the original, adding instrumentals, layering vocals, and creating parody videos. A few weeks later, in early 2021, the Woodchuck Revolution trend began when user @piptersen uploaded a video that, over the background sound of children singing “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?” displays the following text: “POV: You live in a society that was overthrown by woodchucks and you hear their battle song in the distance and know you and the resistance have to fight the final battle for your freedom.” This video and sound launched a narrative trend, as users added to the Woodchuck Revolution story, inventing scenarios ranging from foraging for food, to entertaining the woodchuck overlords. Eventually the diegetic world of the Woodchuck Revolution merged with that of the Wellerman, who became a decorated leader in the resistance against the Woodchucks. In this video contribution, I am listening to a “dance remix” of the Wellerman Sea Shanty while prepping for class, when I suddenly hear the Woodchuck song from the hallway, a shift that is meant to offer a meta-fictive turn to the narrative, as it turns out the Woodchuck Revolution is actually real.//
]}
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<video src='videos/BreakoutSnacks.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
=||||
|reflection>[###Reflection
//This is the first Tiktok I ever made. It was early summer 2020, back at the beginning of the pandemic, when working from home and teaching on Zoom were still relative novelties. I think I made this after having my first session hosting (or trying to host) a small group conversation in class via the Zoom breakout room feature. At the time, I was still riding a wave of energy at getting some time and space to explore various tools and platforms for teaching online, and I, like many of my colleagues, was reveling in the ways we could have some fun with Zoom, and excited for the possibilities of creating a familiar classroom environment in a virtual space for my students. My students later shared with me (in class and on TikTok) that breakout rooms are deeply unproductive for them, but at least we all got a minute to take a break and get a snack. //]
{
(link: "Read TikTok Explanation")[(t8n:"instant")(show:?explanation)]
|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//In this trend, users move through space, jumping in a zig-zag to the beat of "Where is the Love?" by the Black Eyed Peas, while describing, via text, where they are going. While the users may be going anywhere, the tone is always sassy, a bit tongue-in-cheek, and usually self-aware. //
]}
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<video src='videos/SpringClown.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
=||||
|reflection>[###Reflection
//What a fool I was to think that Spring 2021, a year into pandemic teaching, would be easier than previous semesters. I had not accounted for burnout from myself, my colleagues, or my students, and had tricked myself into thinking that, since we’d be used to it, it would be easier. Instead, this semester was one of drudgery and exhaustion, as we collectively lacked the energy to continue making the best of things, to continue being flexible and resilient, as we had been doing that with minimal reprieves for a year. I made this TikTok about halfway through that semester, when I was 2 months pregnant, and in the throes of all-day morning sickness. What a fool I was.//]
{
(link: "Read TikTok Explanation")[(t8n:"instant")(show:?explanation)]
|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This TikTok uses a combination of a sound and filter to create a “clown” aesthetic that is reminiscent of the Clown Applying Makeup photo meme. In the trend, users share a scenario in which they were foolish, the butt of a joke, or otherwise made into a clown. //
]}
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<video src='videos/InternationalHorse.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
=||||
|reflection>[###Reflection
//During the Fall 2020 semester, my campus, like many others around the world, was fully immersed in the new possibility space opened up by widespread adoption of Zoom and other live, virtual meeting tools. Besides allowing us to continue teaching students and conducting “business as usual” at home, these tools also drew attention to possibilities for our work to reach wider, even international audiences. I was approached, as the director of the Digital Culture and Design (DCD) Program, by a member of our study abroad office about teaching a DCD “teaser class” – a single lesson – to students abroad who might be considering coming to our campus for college. I agreed, and set up a lesson about narrative generators where as a group, we would first create a set of paper story dice, and then transfer these dice into digital form via Twitter Bot. I expected a class of about 15-20. About a week before the class, I learned there were over 100 students signed up and more were expected to sign up. I don’t remember the exact count, but I think at the end of it all, there were around 120 students in the class – far and away more than I had ever taught at once.//]
{
(link: "Read TikTok Explanation")[(t8n:"instant")(show:?explanation)]
|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This TikTok uses a song by Lubalin, a musician known for a series of videos and songs called “Turning Internet Drama Into Songs.” In each part of the series, Lubalin pulls from things like Facebook comments, Yahoo questions, Nextdoor posts, and publicized DMs and turns the drama of the online conversation into a song. In this song – Part 5 in the series – two friends argue via public text about the size of a horse: “Hahaha my horse broke my toes” / “Oh dang” / “She weighs over 15,000 pounds” / “1500?” / “Nope add another zero to that” / “There’s no way she could be that much” / “We got papers on her telling us her weight” / “The record for weight is 3336 in England” / Ok well this horse isn’t from here, Abby, you can’t be calling me a lair (sic)…”. Because the core of this argument and its humor comes from a misunderstanding of size, the song has been used for situations where things – plant collections, reading logs, or fan fiction word counts – are much bigger than expected.//
]}
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<video src='videos/VirtualConferences.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
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|reflection>[###Reflection
//So much of our traditionally in-person work went virtual in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and academic conferences were no exception. While it’s hard to find many positive outcomes of the pandemic, in the case of academic conferences, the pandemic forced us to reckon with the ways conferences are often widely inaccessible and uninclusive when they demand in-person, live, participation: from monetary costs to environmental impact to disability access. That said, I don’t think I am alone in missing in-person gatherings and the sense of liveness and presence that cannot quite be replicated in an online, virtual conference environment.
//]
{
(link: "Read TikTok Explanation")[(t8n:"instant")(show:?explanation)]
|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This TikTok trend is based around a sound that combines lyrics from Jenna Marbles’ 2014 YouTube song “Three Looks,” in which she sings about only being able to look like “a homeless man / a 12-year-old boy / and a hooker” with three songs from Bo Burnham’s 2021 “Inside” Comedy Special – “Welcome to the Internet,” “Look Who’s Inside Again,” and “Bezos I.” Using the sounds, creators imagine three looks of different types of people or environments, where one look is frantic or manic, one is tired or mellow, and one is about spending money or otherwise being powerful.
//
]}
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<video src='videos/WrongInsta.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
=||||
|reflection>[###Reflection
//As COVID forced us into our homes and away from communities, social interaction became relegated to the realm of screens and platforms. Social media platforms, zoom, television, computers, phones, the proliferation of screens and platforms was inescapable, as they became the only places to go for socializing or escaping. This phenomenon was accompanied by the collapse of personal and professional lives and space, as we worked from home and lived at work. While some of these intrusions of and into spaces were billed as unavoidable – there’s no keeping the living room or bedroom out of your zoom camera view, for instance – sometimes these spaces collapsed in ways entirely avoidable – as in the scenario I describe here. And while the academic in me wants to theorize a connection between this “proliferation of screens” produced by COVID, and my own mistaking of Instagram accounts, I don’t know that there’s much there there. //]
{
(link: "Read TikTok Explanation")[(t8n:"instant")(show:?explanation)]
|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This TikTok trend uses a soundbite from the 2013-2016 British sitcom Yonderland. In the original clip, a group of royals sit around laughing until one interrupts to say “No no, but it’s not funny at the end of the day is it, it’s serious.” On Tiktok, the sound is usually accompanied by a petty scenario, as users share brutally honest moments from their lives. Topics in this trend range from gossipping to morbid jokes to having your feelings hurt. //
]}
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<video src='videos/ZoomUJoke.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
=||||
|reflection>[###Reflection
//One of the most consistently challenging things about teaching during COVID was allowing students the autonomy to keep their cameras off and mics muted, while teaching to a zoom room with little to no visible or audible student feedback. For me, though I was committed to allowing my students to set their own boundaries to privacy and keep their cameras off, it was a regular struggle to maintain a relaxed, confident, approachable teaching persona against the rising chorus of doubt and discouragement that came from this complete lack of feedback. Sometimes I would try to tell jokes, and wow did it feel brave, even dangerous to tell a joke in class with no idea how it landed. //]
{
(link: "Read TikTok Explanation")[(t8n:"instant")(show:?explanation)]
|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This TikTok trend uses the titular lines from Kardinal Offishall’s 2008 song, “That Girl is So Dangerous,” to share scenarios of moving out of your comfort zone. In the trend, users perform something outside of their comfort zone on camera, and then slowly reveal off camera the stress and anxiety, visualized through shaking hands, that this moment of bravery triggered. The shaking hands are always revealed during the lines “that girl is so dangerous / that girl is so dangerous,” to highlight the contrast between the lyrics – the audience’s perception of the user – and the user’s internal, personal state. //
]}
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<video src='videos/EasyStudentsNeeds.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
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|reflection>[###Reflection
//Although critical, feminist, care-based pedagogy has become a more present part of academic discourse in recent years, the pandemic really brought these discussions to the forefront of public, popular academic discourse, given the myriad challenges it leveled on traditional expectations for teaching, classroom management, student preparedness, and student engagement. From the ways Zoom required a engagement with issues of student privacy and safety, to the ways the public health crisis of COVID prompted critical and sustained expansion of disability accommodations, feminist pedagogies based in care became, for a moment, almost a norm of pandemic pedagogy. Unfortunately, as we were called to embrace the “new normal,” much of this inclusive, progressive pedagogical momentum tapered off, and the “new normal,” started to look more like the “old normal” of approaching students, not with trust, but with suspicion, and not with care, but with skepticism.
//]
{
(link: "Read TikTok Explanation")[(t8n:"instant")(show:?explanation)]
|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This TikTok meme centers around a sped-up version of Taylor Swift’s 2008 song “You Belong with Me,” and in particular, hones in on the lyric “hey isn’t this easy.” Creators use this lyric as a way to call out others’ problematic behavior, naming that behavior at the beginning of the song and then noting how easy it is to not do that thing.
//
]}
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<video src='videos/JustMakeSense.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
=||||
|reflection>[###Reflection
//Perhaps one of the most frustrating aspects of teaching at a state university throughout the pandemic are the ways state politics overpowered scientific advice and public health expertise when it came to determining university policy for responding to the pandemic. I am employed by a university in a very conservative, “red” state, and though our university’s administration often (I believe) did work to advocate for faculty, staff, and student safety over politics when it came to determining policy, there are critical areas where the policies seemed to fall short. Not feeling particularly empowered to critique these policies outside of faculty senate representation, I made this private TikTok as a kind of shout into the void.
//]
{
(link: "Read TikTok Explanation")[(t8n:"instant")(show:?explanation)]
|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//In this trend creators share moments when expectations – often born of stereotypes – align with reality, to “just make sense.” The trend began with creators sharing things in their, usually Italian, immigrant grandparents’ houses that “just made sense,” and eventually spread to include other phenomena that just make sense. However, the trend’s origins in the immigrant grandparents’ house dictate that, regardless of topic, the video must include Louis Prima’s “Che La Luna” soundtrack, as the creator raises and lowers their hands to the beat of the music.
//
]}
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<video src='videos/LlamaNarrative.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
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|reflection>[###Reflection
//As a professor in a program we describe as “storytelling across digital multimedia,” one of the assignments I often teach is choice-based storytelling, most often with Twine (the platform that this collection of TikTok’s and reflections is also built in). While students often have creative writing experience of some sort when they come to my classes, very rarely have they tried to write anything that is based in readerly choices, which has multiple endings or multiple plotlines, depending on what the reader chooses. This means that, very often, early drafts contain contradictions in plot and events – and the versions of Twine stories I received from students engaged in fully remote learning during the pandemic were no exception.
//]
{
(link: "Read TikTok Explanation")[(t8n:"instant")(show:?explanation)]
|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This Tiktok trend enjoyed modest popularity in the “booktok” community – a community of Tiktok creators and audiences who primarily focus on bookish content – in Fall 2021, and is most often used to share writing woes, as when multiple versions of a text contradict themselves, yet somehow end up in the same manuscript. The trend uses a mash-up of Lesley Gore’s 1963 “It’s My Party” with Yzma’s dialogue in the 2000 Disney animated film, The Emperor's New Groove. Gore’s lyrics “Why was he holding her hand / when he’s supposed to be mine?” are disrupted by Yzma’s exclamation “A llama?? He’s supposed to be dead!” upon learning that her henchman Kronk has turned Emperor Kuzco into a llama, rather than killing him, as was the plan. The TikTok sound thus becomes “Why was he holding a llama / When he’s supposed to be dead!?” and offers a perfect opportunity to laugh and cry about inconsistent plot lines.
//
]}
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<video src='videos/NeedPhD.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
=||||
|reflection>[###Reflection
//As a relatively young woman, I am no stranger to people being taken aback when I share with them that I am a professor. After all, most popular media would have us all believe that only old white men are professors. But when I took my current position as an assistant professor and moved, I was completely unprepared for one of my neighbors (an older, retired woman) to assume I had my own job title wrong. When I told her I was a professor, she replied, “oh no you need a PhD for that. You’re an instructor.” In other words – this tiktok is based on a very true story.
//]
{
(link: "Read TikTok Explanation")[(t8n:"instant")(show:?explanation)]
|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//In this TikTok trend, creators share unwelcome commentary or assumptions they receive from strangers who are often outside of their generation, class, gender, race, ethnicity or other community. Over the soundtrack of Keith Whitley’s 1985 “Miami, My Amy,” creators begin by pantomiming themselves doing or saying something, which shortly cuts to images of strangers – often Boomers or other “out groups” from TikTok’s primary demographic – offering commentary that is unhelpful, inaccurate, or microaggressive.
//
]}
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<video src='videos/OfficeToks.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
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|reflection>[###Reflection
//In Fall 2020, I was given a new position as the coordinator of the Digital Culture and Design Program at my university. With this new position came a new office: a large space, connected to the program’s dedicated computer lab classroom. The shared wall between my office and the classroom is dominated by a window that, though it is covered by an etching of our program’s logo, gives the impression that I may be being watched by students at any time. While I can’t imagine they are actually all that interested in what one of their professors might be getting up to in her office, I like to think they’d be mildly shocked, and hopefully tickled, catching me in the middle of making a TikTok.
//]
{
(link: "Read TikTok Explanation")[(t8n:"instant")(show:?explanation)]
|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This trend is for sharing situations or stories that highlight a quirk or oddity of the creator’s personality. The meme begins with the creator pantomiming the strange or odd thing to the musical bridge of Taylor Swift’s 2021 “I Bet You Think About Me.” When the lyric “Oh my god, she’s insane” plays, the point of view switches to someone watching, witnessing, or otherwise receiving the creator’s ‘odd’ thing and the lyric provides the viewer’s internal monologue or reaction.
//
]}
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<video src='videos/PhotoFlashback.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
=||||
|reflection>[###Reflection
//I imagine I am not alone in finding myself spending time throughout the pandemic nostalgic for The Before Times, pre-pandemic, when things were (actually) simpler. For me, this nostalgia centered around missing the ease with which I navigated the world – an ease that was undoubtedly born of my own privileges of being a white, middle-class, thin, able-bodied, straight, cis, neuro-typical woman – before the constant thread of putting myself or my family at risk by forgetting to wash my hands or my mask slipping for a moment too long in the grocery store. And so I indulged this nostalgia and hopped on this “share a photo” trend for a moment of levity amidst the weight of the ongoing post-pandemic world, featuring an image of myself in my sophomore year of college, getting hyped for that year's Atlantic Coast Conference swimming championships.
//]
{
(link: "Read TikTok Explanation")[(t8n:"instant")(show:?explanation)]
|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//In this trend, teachers are asked to share a photo from when they were the age that they teach now on a video set to Simple Plan’s 2002 song “I’m Just a Kid.” The trend challenges creators to highlight the differences in who they are now from who they once were, by transitioning from a video featuring themselves now to an image just as the chorus “I’m just a kid and life is a nightmare” begins. Most videos on this trend show a more dramatic difference, as it is often used by elementary, middle, and high school teachers showing what they looked like as children, rather than as young undergraduate adults as in my contribution here.
//
]}
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<video src='videos/ProfessorStandard.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
=||||
|reflection>[###Reflection
//It is no shocking revelation that it is hard to be a woman in academia. From publishing expectations to service work to assumptions about our teaching personas’ and praxes, the systems in place by which academic work is valued and measured are based in patriarchal traditions that, unsurprisingly, fail to account for or include women. And as theories of intersectionality remind us, the effects of this lack of inclusion are greater the more one’s womanhood intersects with other points of minoritarian identity – race, ability, sexuality, gender identity, and nation to name a few. Though these systems and structures play a critical role in maintaining some of the challenges of being a woman in academia, we would be remiss if we did not acknowledge the role played by the under-representation of women in popular media portrayals of academics and professors. Thus, I could not miss a Tiktok trend about poking fun (with threads of truth) at popular media’s “standards” for various professions.
//]
{
(link: "Read TikTok Explanation")[(t8n:"instant")(show:?explanation)]
|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This Tiktok trend comes from a mashup of songs and sound clips circulating around a line from Princess Chelsea’s 2021 song “The Cigarette Duet” – “it’s just a cigarette, and it cannot be that bad.” In the trend, creators highlight places where their confidence is lacking – often around beauty or competence standards tied to their professions or other aspect of their personality. The trend always begins with the creator looking straight to camera with text “how am I supposed to feel confident / attractive when this is the standard for [personality trait / profession]?” When the lyric from Princess Chelsea’s song ends, and the audio cuts to another song, the video jumps to an image of whatever the “standard” is, and the standard is often a joke. For instance, one video says “how am I supposed to feel pretty when this is the beauty standard for corporate burnout?” and then cuts to an image of Gregor Samsa as a roach in Kafka’s Metamorphosis, or in my own contribution to the trend, the standard for a well-published professor is Gileroy Lockhart, portrayed by Kenneth Branaugh, from the Harry Potter series, who is revealed to be less than useless and to have plagiarized all of his published works.
//
]}
(enchant:"Read TikTok Explanation", (css:"font-family: 'Alata', sans-serif;color:#000000"))||||=
<video src='videos/ReadingRainbowWriting.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
=||||
|reflection>[###Reflection
//Has anyone come out of the pandemic a better writer? I certainly have not (not least given the near-total disappearance of writing time while juggling pandemic parenting, pandemic pedagogy, pandemic service, pandemic burn out, and just pandemic survival).
//]
{
(link: "Read TikTok Explanation")[(t8n:"instant")(show:?explanation)]
|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This TikTok trend provides an opportunity to share something that bewilders or otherwise confuses you, often in a self-deprecating way. The meme uses the theme song from the American television series “Reading Rainbow,” and a filter that makes it look like the creator’s head is floating through space and mathematical equations, so that it looks like the creator is just floating around, untethered through phenomena that exist but are inexplicable.
//
]}
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<video src='videos/ScarecrowMeme.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
=||||
|reflection>[###Reflection
//Like many Millennial children of Boomer parents, the simultaneity of the pandemic with the Trump presidency and rise of misinformation throughout social media platforms (like and especially Facebook) has introduced a rift of media literacy in my family. More often than not, this rift is most present as (generally speaking, and in my networks specifically) people of my parents’ generation share memes all over Facebook as if they were real evidence of things ranging from political scandal to deep-rooted conspiracy. While I locate this in my personal experience of the past two years, this is a wider cultural and generational trend with origins beyond Facebook, COVID, mRNA vaccines, and Donald Trump’s presidency that, so far, shows no signs of slowing down. Indeed as I write and edit this reflection (June 2022), a cohort of QAnon believers is working to secure even more seats and power in the federal and state governments.
//]
{
(link: "Read TikTok Explanation")[(t8n:"instant")(show:?explanation)]
|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This Tiktok trend was popular during summer 2021, and circulates around Bo Burnham’s song “Country Song (Pandering)” from his 2016 album, Make Happy. The song’s lyrics describe a situation where the singer sees a beautiful young girl in a field that turns out to be, not a person at all, but a scarecrow. Following this narrative line, the trend is used to share situations where someone is mistaken, though that mistaken belief is usually a popular one. For instance, users may share popular misunderstandings of what counts as consent, or popular misunderstandings of disordered eating.
//
]}
(enchant:"Read TikTok Explanation", (css:"font-family: 'Alata', sans-serif;color:#000000"))||||=
<video src='videos/SyllabusDelvey.mp4' autoplay controls loop>
=||||
|reflection>[###Reflection
//One of the most recurrent themes of TikTok content is self-deprecation. In this video, I embrace this area of the app’s social discourse, to highlight one of my own shortcomings – my apparent inability to get my syllabi finalized and sent to our departmental admin on time, a phenomenon that, as the pandemic has radically altered our temporalities, has only been exacerbated in the last two years. While it is sometimes tempting to dismiss my administrator's emails asking for these documents are unimportant in the relative scheme of preparing for a semester (the syllabi are, after all, always student-facing as and when they need it), I have to keep institutional structures of power and time-keeping as feminist praxis in mind in order to work on improving in this particular area of academic professional life.
//]
{
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|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This Tiktok trend was modestly popular following the 2022 release of Shondaland’s Inventing Anna on Netflix. Like many tiktok memetic trends, this one hinges on the sound, a compilation of excuses made from the titular character, Anna Delvey about how or why her money was late or missing – “I already wired you the money / It should be coming from the bank / There’s an issue with the bank overseas / I don’t know what to tell you; I already wired you the money.” The trend is used, as I have used it here, to share instances where creators make up excuses for why something is late, or they are otherwise coming up short.
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|reflection>[###Reflection
//Inclusive pedagogies based in care are regularly an area rife for academic commentary on social media. As the pandemic required all of us to reevaluate and rework our pedagogies in response to the rapid shift online, ever-changing public health mandates, and the myriad effects of this moment on students’ lives, one of the most common points within this discourse was the call to trust student to know what they need, and to approach them with expansive care and flexibility during the pandemic. But, creating and fostering an equitable classroom environment like this also requires giving up power, and not all of our higher ed colleagues’ were up to the task.
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(link: "Read TikTok Explanation")[(t8n:"instant")(show:?explanation)]
|explanation)[###TikTok Explanation
//This trend uses a dialogic sound from a 2011 episode of the BBC comedy series, Horrible Histories. The episode focuses on the third Roman emperor, Caligula, who is remembered as a cruel, sadistic tyrant, and who, in the comedy sketch, is being investigated for murder. When the investigator turns to leave, Caligula grabs a nearby mallet and addresses it saying “What do you think, Wackus Bonkus?” Then, doing the voice and adopting the persona of “Wackus Bonkus” Caligula replies “Kill him,” to which he, as himself, responds “Oh you naughty Wackus Bonkus.” In the tiktok trend, creators use the dialogue to confess to or otherwise reveal some of their poorer decisions, or (seemingly) scandalous acts, using their hand to mime the Wackus Bonkus character. Often the decisions or acts are popular “bad decisions” like procrastinating against a deadline, or eating junk food.
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