TikTokTrends Week: 16
November 9th - November 15th
Hi!
Welcome back to another week of TikTokTrends!
This week I will be talking about #WediditJoe, #MillionMAGAMarch, #MAPA2020, #StopTheSteal, and #FDT.
Let’s start!
#WediditJoe
On November 7th, 4 days after the election, many news outlets, including Fox News, announced the official defeat of Donald Trump. Trump and his supporters have yet to concede the race. The hashtag has gotten over 3.4 million views, with hundreds of videos posted.
The video above was originally posted on Kamala Harris’s Twitter page and has since been re-uploaded onto TikTok by NowThisPolitics. The clip has been viewed over two million times and over 2500 videos have been created, reacting, and using the sound of the video.
The clip shows Harris talking to Joe Biden on the phone on November 7th, after getting the 270 votes they needed to win the Presidency. She is seen congratulating Biden on their win and was reported to be on a run when she got the news of their victory. Harris can be heard saying the now infamous quote: “We did it, we did it, Joe!”
The video was taken under a microscope by thousands of people online. Many people can be seen enjoying Harris’s reaction, while others made fun of her voice, saying that she sounded drunk. In true TikTok fashion, many created parody videos while others got more creative and combined the clip with the Gangnam Style song by PSY and added the “Mr. Vice President, I am speaking” quote from the Vice Presidential Debate a month ago.
#MillionMagaMarch
On Saturday the 14th, Trump supporters gathered in Washington to protest Joe Biden winning the 2020 election. Pictures and videos from all over the country of people getting ready to go to the march were posted online. The Million MAGA March is, of course, a nod to the Million Man March on Washington that happened in 1995. However, the MAGA march did not receive as much attention as the Million Man March and definitely did not have the social impact that the march in 1995 had.
The MillionMagaMarch hashtag got over 6.5 million views in a couple of days, which is a big number for political content on TikTok.
The video above shows the crowd that gathered in the Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. It was watched over 400 thousand times and has gained over 61 thousand likes. Trump supporters later walked to the Supreme Court then headed towards the white house.
On TikTok, videos of the march were being shared by Trump supporters attending the rally. Also, live streams of Trump supporters walking around in Washington, carrying flags, and bulletproof vests could be seen in the late hours of Saturday. Trump was seen going through the march with his motorcade on his way to golfing. He was videotaped giving the thumbs-up sign at attendees running to see the President in his car.
Videos of Alex Jones, a far-right conspiracy theorist, were also being shared on TikTok as he gave his speech, saying, “We declared our independence from that communist Chinese agent, Joe Biden…”
This video, being shared on TikTok, claims to show four images from the march; however, when looked closer, two of the images are understood to be from the 2016 NBA championship parades. Another of the photos are from the Brexit Protests in 2018. The final picture located on the right of the video is from the Maga march. However, it is highly debated online, whether it is photoshopped or not. Here is another video with the same image, and here is an enlarged version of it.
In my opinion, the image was color corrected, the reds and blues are obviously enhanced. I was not able to see any sign of cloning or copy/pasting going on in the image. The color correction does make the crowd seem much larger. But I don’t think it is more than that. On Twitter, this image is being shared as the ‘original’ picture. However, although they are taken at similar times, the two images are not identical. The placement of the cars and the orientation of the flags are very different in both pictures, making the two entirely different images.
#Mapa2020
No, it is not a typo. It’s: Make America Pancakes Again 2020. A couple of days ago, TikTok content creator Shea Depmore, known for her political satire, started a trend in protest of the Million Maga March. She called it the Million Mapa Brunch and called all Kpop stans (stan means ardent fan) to the action!
The video above has gotten over 175 thousand views and has gotten published on numerous news outlets. This is the first video Depmore posted on the call to action 4 days ago. Since then, many TikTok content creators have jumped on the occasion to troll the hashtag by posting videos of Blueberry pancakes on TikTok and Twitter, using the MillionMagaMarch hashtag. Depmore has also created a website, Mapa2020.com.
Although gaining a lot of attention, the number of pictures and videos shared about the actual march seems to have surpassed the number of pancakes being shared. Some pancakes can be seen on Twitter, and on TikTok. Unfortunately, this trolling was not enough to overpower the actual content being shared on the hashtag.
#StopTheSteal
The Stop the Steal movement claims that Democrats have stolen the election by spreading false information of baseless claims online. The movement can now be seen in rallies, marches, and almost anywhere Trump supporters go. Videos on TikTok range from creators sharing their opinions on the election, to voter fraud claims and baseless conspiracy theories.
The video above showcases one of the popular theories that deceased voters have voted in this election using absentee ballots, which is the so-called key evidence that Trump and his supporters have to call voter fraud on this election. The video points to a voter named June Aiken, who is supposedly from Michigan and was born in 1900.
According to an article written by Bridge Michigan, a local newsroom, Aiken is alive and well. The articles state that the obituary found online for June Aiken had a different middle name and was not the same as the person who cast the ballots. The birthdate is explained as a possible placeholder birthdate since the Aiken that voted was born in 1926.
What Trump and his supporters are doing is looking at a hyperlocal event and scaling it to call “voter fraud.” There is no evidence of widespread mismanagement; there are local events that are being legally challenged by the Trump campaign, but other than that, the rest is just a way to de-legitimize the election. Also, let’s for a minute say that there are people who have voted for their deceased family members; why are we jumping to the conclusion that they are all democrats? When you check the voter information on a governmental website, you can’t see their party affiliation.
The Stop The Steal has been reported by CNN as a disinformation campaign that started in 2016 by Roger Stone, a Republican operative. CNN reports that a “Stop the Steal” website launched before the 2016 election, where it states that “If the election is close, THEY WILL STEAL IT” meaning that the Hillary campaign would steal the election.
#FDT
“F*ck Donald Trump” is a protest rap song created by YG in 2016. The song has since gained a lot of traction, not only after the election, but the song has been continuously used against Trump supporters since 2016. Videos of people in cars blasting the song, while passing Trump supporters, has been getting a lot of attention on TikTok. This week John Legend, a famous singer, posted a video celebrating Biden’s victory with the FDT song playing in the background.
The video above was viewed over 17 million times and has gained over 3.5 million likes. The video shows Legend opening a champagne bottle while the FDT song is playing. He continues to do a little dance to celebrate the joyous occasion. Another video of Legend and his wife Chrissy Teigen was shared on TikTok, celebrating the Biden win by going through a crowd of Biden supporters in their car. On TikTok, there are currently more than 32 thousand videos made with the FDT song.
In Other News:
The TikTok Ban we were all waiting for, well, it’s delayed... TikTok has told a federal court that the Trump administration has given them an additional 15 days to work out their deal with Walmart and Oracle. This week, The Verge reported that the Trump administration had forgotten about TikTok because the company had not heard back from the administration’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, about the review that was underway.
A new ‘free speech’ platform, Parlor. Conservatives have been reported to be moving their accounts from Facebook and Twitter to a new app called Parlor. The app describes itself as the “premier free speech social network,” this concept has been liked by people who distrust fact-checking and have an issue with the current way social media platforms are dealing with wrong information. Parlor is not the first app of its kind; Gab, MeWe, and Rumble are also platforms where far-right groups seem to conjugate online.
That is all for this week! Please share this newsletter if you enjoyed reading it. And don’t be shy to send me an email about what you think I should cover, or if I have missed anything.
Thank you for reading, hope to see you next week, on Sunday!