‘Straight TikTok’ vs. ‘Alt TikTok’: How queer users built ‘Alt TikTok’ – Mashable
Mashable is celebrating Pride Month by exploring the modern LGBTQ world, from the people who make up the community to the spaces where they congregate, both online and off.
If you’ve been on TikTok long enough, you’re probably familiar with Alt TikTok. If you haven’t heard of that term before, it’s probably because you’re on Straight TikTok.
TikTok is notorious for its viral dances, lip synced “acting,” and uncomfortably horny POV videos in which the user pretends to take the audience out on dates.
But on another side of the platform, which algorithmically recommends content based on each user’s preferences, is “Alt TikTok.” Also known as “Gay TikTok,” “Beans TikTok,” or “Elite TikTok,” the subsect rejects mainstream trends in favor of surreal humor and alternative aesthetics. Shaped by the dredges of emo culture and the heavy Dadaist influence of its millennial predecessors, Alt TikTok embodies all that is queer.
And it’s no wonder that many LGBTQ users find themselves on Alt TikTok; queer culture has been intertwined with alternative aesthetics for decades. Finding community with others rejected by the mainstream is deeply rooted in LGBTQ history.
On Alt TikTok, a stuffed Kermit bathed in red light swings from a ceiling fan as ominous music bellows below it. In another video, a person in stunning green hair clad in leather lip syncs, “Lemme get this straight,” before the TikTok transitions to them wearing a basic tank top and jeans with no makeup. They gag at the sight of their own “normie” appearance as the opening bars of Tame Impala’s “The Less I Know The Better” begins. In a video with 475,000 likes, another user writes, “What straights alt tiktok is” as she mouths altered lyrics to Doja Cat’s “Cyber Sex.” Then the music changes to a cover of “Ameno,” a song generated by virtual Vocaloid artist Hatsune Miku, and kicks off a slideshow of Elmo burning and former president Barack Obama superimposed on a banana.
“Ameno” is now a wildly popular sound on the app, and is often associated with Alt Tiktok’s more surreal videos, including ones poking fun at Elon Musk and Grimes for naming their baby X Æ A-XII.
Una Smoole, a 19-year-old student in San Diego, went viral on the platform for her video imagining what she would look like if she was straight. Her video was viewed more than 2.8 million times, and the sound from her video is used in thousands of videos from LGBTQ users similarly imagining what they would look like if they were heterosexual. The reimagined versions of themselves are nearly all depicted in a negative light: boring, mainstream, and basic.
“We are already alternative,” Smoole said in a Facetime interview with Mashable. “Of course you can be fucking straight and like golf or whatever, no one’s saying you can’t do that. But I think there’s something that goes hand in hand with already not fitting the mainstream in some aspect, so you cling to the non-mainstream.”
She noted that as an adolescent, she often rejected what was popular in her Catholic middle school: brand-name clothing, looking preppy, and listening to Top 40s. Smoole is not the only young person who felt her identity manifest in external expression — that feeling is virtually universal.
In his book Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, queer theorist José Muñoz reminisces about growing up in the outskirts of Miami as a queer person of color, and how punk music helped him come to terms with his identity.
“Punk made my own suburban quotidian existence radical and experimental — so experimental that I could imagine and eventually act on queer desires,” Muñoz wrote. “Punk rock style may look apocalyptic, yet its temporality is nonetheless futuristic, letting young punks imagine a time and a place where their desires are not toxic.”
“Queer belongings,” as Muñoz phrases it, have long been rooted in punk music. The 1980s not only birthed ballroom culture, but also Queercore, a punk rock movement formed by members of the LGBTQ community as a rejection of society’s expectations of “normal.”
Beyond the music itself, members of the Queercore movement established communities that encouraged anything but the mainstream. The documentary Queercore: How To Punk A Revolution dives into how the movement’s prominent members established the offshoot of punk music. One of the resounding mantras of the movement was, “Heterosexuality is the opiate of the masses.”
“[We were] refusing to be part of the status quo, refusing to accept the mantle of so-called normalcy,” Genesis P-Orridge said in the documentary.
P-Orridge was the lead vocalist of the band Throbbing Gristle who used the pronouns s/he and h/er. H/er presence in the avant-garde scene gained the name “Godparent of Industrial Music.”
So it’s natural that after decades of rejecting and being rejected by the status quo, as P-Orrdige put it, young queer people would reflect that sentiment on whatever platform their generation uses most.
Immersing myself in the alternative…made coming to terms with my queerness feel more natural.
I, a cusper who teeters on the divide between Gen Z and millennials, had Tumblr as a teenager. My dashboard was an eclectic mix of fanfiction, indie music, and reblogs of people sporting gorgeous neon hair and a multitude of piercings. Rejecting the mainstream was subconscious, but I found myself gravitating away from traditional clothing choices and popular music long before I figured out my sexuality. Immersing myself in the alternative, like Muñoz writes, made coming to terms with my queerness feel more natural.
And like the divide between the two sides of TikTok, Tumblr faced its own division between two types of users. In 2013, at the height of Tumblr’s popularity, users were torn between “hipster Tumblr,” dominated by aesthetic edits and music suggestions, and “fandom Tumblr,” which thrived on fanfiction, alternate universe pairings of characters from Firefly and Doctor Who, and artwork depicting scenes from their favorite series. Those on hipster Tumblr detested those on fandom Tumblr, and vice versa. Twitter sees a divide between the “online” and the “locals,” the latter of whom are considered “normie” and bland. Sexuality may not be the dividing factor for these other platforms, but there was still a distinct elitism among those who didn’t align with mainstream ideals. On TikTok, falling on the LGBTQ spectrum and presenting alternative aesthetics swim in the same pool of content.
Much like “local Twitter” or “fandom Tumblr,” Straight TikTok is often oblivious of the fact that it’s ridiculed by its alternative peers. A sound made by a member of Alt TikTok was used for a dance routine by more mainstream TikTokers Ondrea and Tony Lopez. The sound is a mashup of several sounds, including a Spongebob quote and an iPhone ringtone. As TikTok user riotgrrll pointed out in a duet with the Lopez brothers, the sound was made to make fun of Straight Tiktok’s affinity for dancing to “literally anything” and its creator was proven right.
There’s a sense of reclaiming what made them weird from those who were ostracized. The elitism comes from years of not being included.
“Every school has that little community, not that everybody’s gay, but everybody’s a little different,” Smoole continued. “I feel like I’ve observed that for so long, that there was a time of not being able to understand why I couldn’t be a part of [the normal kids.]”
And one doesn’t have to be part of the LGBTQ community to find themselves on Alt TikTok, as one self-identified straight woman in a long-term relationship with a man pointed out in a video from late May realized. TikTok’s shadowy algorithm is something of a Sorting Hat, in determining which side of TikTok users belong to. She likely continued to engage with videos on Alt Tiktok, until her For You Page was only made up of LGBTQ content. In the video, which now has 152,600 views, user squidward_tortellini, playing her TikTok algorithm, asks herself, “Why are you gay?”
“Who says I’m gay?” she responds.
“You are gay,” the algorithm affirms, as she dances under the words, “TikTok continuing to give me that elite shit.”
Nia Stanford, an 18-year-old student and communications intern in New Jersey, had the opposite experience. In an Instagram DM, she explained that while she came out in the eighth grade, she didn’t begin experimenting with her style until her junior year of high school. At the time she wanted to emulate e-girl aesthetics. She attributes that desire to the new content she was consuming online — before using TikTok, she was surrounded by mainstream trends.
“There is a sense of pride in claiming stake in otherness.”
A TikTok she posted describing roller skating sensation Ana Coto as the “intersection” between straight TikTok and Alt TikTok went viral with 72,000 likes because she appeals to both heterosexual and LGBTQ users. There’s a sense of elitism on Alt TikTok, like being in on a secret joke that those who wear Brandy Melville and dance to Doja Cat don’t understand. Those who can laugh at weird humor, like on department store TikTok or beans TikTok, were in on the joke. Like Queercore, Alt TikTok is rooted in a firm rejection of the mainstream.
“Alt culture usually comes with strife — feelings of rejection from mainstream culture, interpersonal struggles, identity issues…This also results in resentment towards the mainstream culture,” Stanford said. “So to be associated with that can feel like erasure or like assimilating into a culture you resent and that has rejected you. There is a sense of pride in claiming stake in otherness.”
No matter where you fall on the sexuality spectrum, there’s probably a place for you on Alt TikTok — at least, if the algorithm decides you’re worthy of it.
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