TikTok is rife with bigotry - you just can’t see it.
Bigotry on TikTok is absolutely out of control. Sometimes it’s so in-your-face it’s laughable. Other times it may be portrayed as a more nuanced argument that requires a slight amount of critical thinking to debunk. But what if I told you that you’ve absolutely read a bigoted post or comment and dismissed it as an absurdist statement?
These absurdist remarks have their own term - dog whistle. Basically the aim of a dog whistle is for members of certain groups to identify each other without anyone else knowing.
It can be anything from a simple statement to a confusing question. Recently, they’ve grown in popularity to the point that it’s sometimes difficult to identify them. Without a doubt the most obvious dog whistle that’s come to light recently is ‘Gnome’ TikToks. It’s literally as simple as it sounds - pictures of gnomes in a slideshow. That’s it. But, if you open the comment section you’re greeted with the comment “billions wear the hat” over and over. An absolutely baffling comment that means nothing unless you’ve had this dog whistle explained to you. The “hat” here refers to the Jewish kippah. This dog whistle purposefully targets Jewish people and reveals to anyone who reads this comment that the commenter themselves is anti-semitic.
Another unbelievably ambiguous sentence that you’ve probably read in a comment is “well, well, well”. This sentence is possibly one of the most popular dog whistles that exists on TikTok right now. Chances are you’ve seen this comment underneath a video of someone doing an act that some people see as stereotypical of specific races (sometimes also used to target transgender people). The saving grace of this sentence is that people have thankfully caught on and the replies are usually full of people asking “what is wrong with you?”. It’s unfortunate as sometimes dog whistles are interpreted by users as just another popular phrase that doesn’t really mean anything. The repetition creates a cycle of accidental bigotry, reaching a wider scope of the wrong people. It makes sense, so many meaningless sentences are popularised every month. Whether that be a meme or a quote from television, you’ll hear a repeating tagline being mimicked in real life whether you like it or not. On an app as fast moving as TikTok, it really is difficult to keep up.
The sad truth about dog whistles is that they’re constantly being created by bigots online.
4Chan and 8Chan are more often than not the origins of a majority of these phrases. It’s impossible to list every single dog whistle in existence because there’s just too many. If you’re a user on TikTok, be weary! Dog whistles hide where no one really expects them, and ending their cycle can prevent larger communities forming of a bigoted nature.