[Last modified: October, 12 2024 04:40 PM]
This week, I conducted my participant observation online since my field site is a TikTok subculture. From a cafe, I started to scroll on TikTok under #browntok and encountered many different types of content. Most of what I saw was content related to “attractiveness” – there were a lot of posts featuring images of attractive men and women, specifically Indians. I was interested in how a lot of these try to uplift the community in different ways. I saw a lot of content showcasing “glow-ups” for both men and women; others were related to topics within the community like combatting colourism and helping people embrace their natural features. For example, here is a screenshot of a post that shared photos and videos of attractive Indian women as a way to potentially help darker skinned brown women embrace their natural skin tones:
It was interesting to go through the comments in this one – they were full of appreciation for all the women shown, one even highlighting actor Simone Ashley. One thing I noticed was the fact that one of the comments said “Dravidian women on top,” referring to women of South Indian or Sri Lankan descent. It was interesting to see that specific ethnic groups get called out either in the comments or in the actual posts, and I am curious to explore whether this helps enhance one’s connection to their identities.
Another common theme that came up while scrolling was South Asian fashion. Posts featured different South Asian fashion content creators, celebrities who attended different fashion shows, or people wearing South Asian traditional attire. One creator in particular, @maybe.zainab, a Pakistani-Canadian, mentioned that it was a goal of hers to consume less “white media” and in the process found a lot of cool brown women content creators that she shares in the video screenshotted below. The other videos highlight South Asian celebrities at the 2024 Met Gala and outfits worn to a family member’s South Asian wedding.
I also saw a few comedic posts making fun of the some of the traditional values found offline in the community, as well as some talking about South Asian representation in Hollywood. I found the latter interesting since I expected there would be more content about Bollywood (or any of the other South Asian film/TV industries), but I only saw posts related to Hollywood in my initial search. Another thing worth mentioning is that I received some recommended searches while scrolling through the posts and these are the ones that came up:
Overall, I think this was a useful first look into #browntok. The online aspect of this ethnography also did not make me feel as voyeuristic as I thought I would since I already scroll through my TikTok For You page in my free time. However, I was left with many questions. One, how are people of other South Asian ethnicities engaging with the platform and with the content? Most of the posts that came up for me were from people of Indian or Pakistani descent, so I was left wondering what the full picture looked like with better South Asian representation. I also felt like this approach was a bit one-sided as I was seeing the posts produced by others and their comments but I wasn’t seeing people’s live reactions and thoughts to them. From that perspective, it would be helpful to employ the other methods outlined in my research proposal to get clarity.
I had a feeling that my TikTok algorithm was also impacting the content that was appearing for me. I like to joke that TikTok knows exactly who I am: an Indian-American who likes K-Pop and now lives in London. That said, I would like to have other people from the South Asian diaspora do the same exercise and share their thoughts aloud so that I can get a better sense of the full breadth of content available on the platform.