If you’re reading this while sipping from your Stanley water bottle and nibbling on a “girl dinner”, TikTok’s cultural influence has well and truly permeated your every day. It’s full of content we love and loathe — from questionable food trends to viral dances — but we can’t seem to look away.
But you don’t need to be a user of the social media platform to experience its effects. It only takes a matter of days and weeks for TikTok’s viral content to infiltrate your Instagram and X feeds, the music you listen to on radio, and the products you buy in-store.
Like most social platforms, the relationship between TikTok and its users teeters between fascination and frustration. It’s designed to keep us scrolling repeatedly in an unsatisfying, soul-sucking cycle, like lab rats incessantly seeking their next dopamine fix.
Tech commentators are increasingly speaking out about the perils of TikTok. As Peter Griffin recently noted in a Listener story about the toxicity of social media, he’s moving towards the likes of Substack, Patreon and YouTube, where “real people do interesting things”.
Journalist Cory Doctorow’s essay on the “enshittification” of TikTok considers how this phenomenon occurs when social media platforms begin by providing value to their users but over time, they introduce changes that negatively impact the user experience, be it increased advertising or changes in the algorithm, all in the name of prioritising business interests above user satisfaction.
Me? I’m not quite ready to give TikTok the cold shoulder, too engrossed in discovering viral products and adding trending music to my Spotify playlist. However, I’m also not convinced that hours lost in the vortex of endless scrolling are worth my time, particularly when the platform’s content lacks depth. From fostering irritating fads to perpetuating damaging stereotypes, here are some of the worst - and weirdest - TikTok trends of 2023.
The worst TikTok trends of 2023
Content for the sake of going viral
@addictedtoana The best part of this video is the woman jugding me #humor
♬ Cupid – Twin Ver. (FIFTY FIFTY) – Sped Up Version - sped up 8282
A video that sparked much debate this year came courtesy of TikTok user @addictedtoana, better known as “Pancake girl”. The clip shows her making a goofy face and performing a quirky dance in a restaurant as a waitress (or is it a friend?) delivers a stack of pancakes to her table. The video, which has accumulated a staggering 60.6 million views, showcases Ana’s peculiar antics as she ignores the waitress and continues her spectacle. Meanwhile, a visibly irked diner in the background adds an extra layer of intrigue.
Despite the caption reading, “The best part of this video is the woman judging me”, many viewers were quick to criticise Ana’s contrived behaviour, designed solely to rack up views. Some even sympathised with the diner, who unwittingly became part of the viral moment.
This begs the question: Will we ever stop creating artificial content on TikTok merely for the sake of views? As we move into 2024, it doesn’t seem like things will change anytime soon.
Girl trends
This year also gave us the gift of “girl” trends. “Girl math” permitted us to justify our questionable shopping habits, and “girl dinner” glamorised snacking as the new gourmet. While these trends provided moments of levity and relatability, they were also critiqued for playing a part in infantilising women, perpetuating false narratives that women are inherently bad at maths and glorifying disordered eating as “cute”.
NPC streamers
@pinkydollreal Money gun 🤍❤️🤍 #pinkydoll #viral #pourtoipage #foryoupage #ptp #fashionnova #queennpc #npc #moneygun #fyp
♬ original sound - Pinkydoll
And then there were the quirky livestreams where creators played the role of animated non-player characters in video games, offering robotic catchphrases and quirky antics. It was weird, wacky, and made us question the lengths people will go to for online attention.
But the real winner here was @Pinkydoll, who turned these hypnotic livestreams into a lucrative business, with viewers sending her “TikTok gifts” translating to thousands of dollars daily. Despite some criticism for verging on ASMR-type [autonomous sensory meridian response] fetish content, @Pinkydoll remained unfazed. In her words, “I’m getting paid either way.”
#Tradwives
In 2023, we shouldn’t judge other females for their life choices, but the #tradwife trend certainly raised a few eyebrows. These wholesome homemakers created content presenting a 1950s-esque idyllic escape from the stresses of modern life, but some extremists used it as a platform to romanticise conservative values, even justifying bigoted views on white supremacy and condoning marital rape. It should also be noted that #tradwives are also a severe contradiction — they’re preaching to their followers to not have jobs when they’ve turned their homemaking into full-time content creator roles.
Dangerous challenges
Finally, we saw a rise in dangerous challenges that put thrillseekers in hospital, or worse. Whether it was the absurd trend of consuming laundry products to supposedly alleviate arthritis symptoms (a claim utterly devoid of scientific backing and downright dangerous) or “chroming” — the dangerous practice of inhaling aerosol deodorants — these trends were ludicrous and posed significant health risks.
It’s an age-old, cautionary tale: just because your friends are doing something, doesn’t mean you should try it, too. Disaster is often a click away on a platform like TikTok, crowded with impressionable adolescents eager to ride the wave of trending fads for social acceptance or validation through likes.
