A viral campaign aims to draw attention to the ways social platforms compensate users.
By Taylor Lorenz and Laura ZornosaJune 25, 2021
In a TikTok video from June 18, Erick Louis, a 21-year-old content creator and dancer in Orlando, Fla., nods and bounces along to Megan Thee Stallion’s latest single. “If y’all do the dance pls tag me 🙄,” he captioned the video. “It’s my first dance on Tik tok and I don’t need nobody stealing/not crediting.”
But the joke is, there is no dance. Seconds later, with his lips pursed, Mr. Louis flips two middle fingers at the camera and walks away. “SIKE,” the caption reads. “THIS APP WOULD BE NOTHIN WITHOUT BLK PEOPLE.”
By Thursday, the video had racked up 127,700 likes on TikTok and had spread rapidly on Twitter. “Yt people have no idea what to do with this sound because a black person hasn’t made a dance to it yet,” read one viral tweet.
Megan Thee Stallion’s song lays out dance instructions plainly in the lyrics: Place your hands on your knees and twerk. But compilations of TikTok users fumbling — holding hands, moving their hips from side to side, waving their arms above their heads — have gone viral over the past week.
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Some tweets suggested that Black creators on TikTok had seemingly agreed not to choreograph a dance to the song, which would force non-Black users to come up with dances on their own and prove how essential Black creators are to the platform. Many Black creators have created videos to the song and there is a popular non-dance trend related to the audio, but the message was clear.
“Black people carry the app,” Mr. Louis said. He posted his video to articulate sentiments he has seen circulating in the Black online creator community. The strike itself is not a true strike or boycott. Black users, including Mr. Louis, are still posting to the app. It’s more of a symbolic awareness campaign that consists of an agreement not to dance to Megan Thee Stallion’s song.
“Similar to the ways off the app Black folks have always had to galvanize and riot and protest to get their voices heard, that same dynamic is displayed on TikTok,” he said. “We’re being forced to collectively protest.”
The music video for Megan Thee Stallion’s single makes a similar point. It begins with the rapper calling a politician, alluding to the outrage spurred by “WAP,” her flamboyant single with Cardi B, released last summer. “The women that you accidentally trying to step on, are everybody that you depend on,” Megan Thee Stallion says. “They treat your diseases, they cook your meals, they haul your trash, they drive your ambulances, they guard you while you sleep.”
Essential workers are portrayed by Black women in the music video — as garbage collectors, grocery store workers, office staff, waitresses, police officers, surgeons and nurses — underlining the idea that the labor of women of color supports the economy.
