TikTok: Phantom Limbs & Algorithms of Capture

In the morning, the sun shines through my window, covering my plants with a constant stream of light waves. Photosynthesis animates them. Meanwhile, I lay inanimate under my covers, staring at my phone. I’m waiting for TikTok to load. When it does, Michelle, an acquaintance from years ago when I lived in Oakland, is staring back at me. TikTok is asking if I want to follow her. Intrigued to see what she’s up to, I click on her profile. I find out she’s moved to LA and has started a podcast. I click on one of her videos, which is meticulously edited, as if she followed a framework for how to make viral videos. Scrolling farther back than one should, I click on her first post. The clip has over a million views. It’s a dance video with her friend. It ends with her sticking her tongue out to the side, winking, and flashing a peace sign at the camera. According to one user on the internet the tongue out winky face “...is pretty much just a trend on straight tiktok, which is often considered the worst side of tiktok to be on. You won’t see anything like that on frog tiktok, or beans tiktok”. I laugh uncontrollably, not so much because of the dance but because of how different it is from the content on her Instagram. The extreme curation presents a stark contrast to the ironic photodumps I remember. While every social media platform has its own aesthetic, I can’t help but think that a series of events preceded her full-blown transformation.

Later that evening, I meet up with a friend to get drinks. Telling her about how I can’t stop thinking about Michelle’s transformation, I find myself unironically sticking my tongue out to the side. My friend's eyes widen. “What was that?” she asks. Unsure of what just happened, I pause before laughing out of embarrassment. “I don't know, I didn’t do it intentionally, it just happened,” I said. My friend tells me it’s only a matter of time until I’m asking to borrow her ring light. “That is if they don’t ban it,” she says, referring to TikTok. A few weeks ago, everyone was talking about how the US government wanted to ban TikTok. I remember listening to the story on NPR. A Republican senator told the reporter it was a national security issue because TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company. The implication being that information is a powerful force. With over a billion users across the globe, TikTok presents a substantial challenge to the traditional authority of the nation-state.

In "A Thousand Plateaus," Deleuze and Guattari introduce the concept of the War Machine. Originally a weapon employed by nomads, the War Machine is co-opted by the state and used as a tool to capture those living outside its territory. Similarly, TikTok and its algorithms of capture are wielded to absorb subjects outside of its control. However, unlike traditional mechanisms that are confined to physical territories, TikTok operates in a virtual reality, thereby undermining the conventional limitations of the physical world that have determined the modus operandi of nation-states. Free from the limitations of physical space, TikTok is able to reterritorialize users by channeling the flow of information through fiber optic light cables. Like the plants on my windowsill, users of TikTok are animated by the flow of light signals, thereby giving new meaning to the idea of photosynthesis. Thinking about this, I imagine Michelle and myself as two domesticated house plants stretching our bodies towards the sun.

After the bar, we take the subway in the same direction. I drunkenly ask my friend if she wants to scroll through my TikTok. She rolls her eyes jokingly and says, "of course." Sharing my AirPods, I tell her she can scroll. The first video is a guy doing stand-up comedy. I zone out while she watches, thinking about TikTok as a comedy. Perhaps social media was first a tragedy, and now it's a comedy. Considering TikTok as a comedic apparatus of capture, owned by a foreign state, weaponizing the mimetic power of information to channel Gen Z into eating raw meat, finding God, and dancing for strangers, it sounds more like an episode of South Park than the dystopian representations we find in books and movies like "1984" and "Blade Runner." I think about the monopoly seriousness has over political and social discourse, and I’m reminded of a Nietzsche quote that Bataille cites in the foreword of "Inner Experience": “To see tragic natures sink and to be able to laugh at them, despite the profound understanding, emotion, and sympathy that one feels, that is divine.” For Bataille, it is seriousness that fails us.

Tuning back in, my friend exclaims, “What the fuck is this?” referring to a video of a raw meat influencer promoting a bone broth. As I try to explain, she finds the concept hilarious. Gasping for air while she writhes, she attempts to confirm she understood me correctly. Clicking on his profile, she laughs uncontrollably when she sees he has 2.3 million followers. His bio mentions something about community, and I realize that TikTok creates a sense of community for millions of people. According to their website, “72% of the TikTok community feels it's easy to connect and bond around shared life experiences on the platform. This sense of community fosters digital kinship among users, enabling them to connect over specific topics, interests, and experiences.” Perhaps at the heart of TikTok’s apparatus of capture is a sense of community—a hilarious idea given the traditional notion of what a community is. One of the first accounts of what we know as phantom limb syndrome was described in the sixteenth century by a French military surgeon named Ambroise Paré, who documented the pain that soldiers with amputated limbs reported feeling. Centuries later, the soldiers of TikTok wield camera phones instead of rifles. With no physical counterpart, the community that one senses while using TikTok appears to be like a phantom limb. More real than real, the community on TikTok is hyperreal.

Approaching my friend's station, I look around and see almost everyone staring at their phones. While this sight would normally strike me as dystopian, I find myself struck by the absurdity instead. What would usually evoke a feeling of resignation is replaced by a bout of laughter. As my friend exits the subway, she turns to me, sticks her tongue out to the side, winks, and flashes a peace sign.