@chimenesuleyman/Twitter, @notwildlin/TikTok
June 29, 2021, 6:49 am
TikTok is the birthplace of many cursed trends, but usually, they’re relatively harmless. Online activists have pinpointed exactly why the “turn it off” challenge is crossing a line into a sinister place: it involves people fake crying into the camera, then stopping and smirking at their viewers.
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It’s been popping up everywhere, and the vast majority of people doing it are white women. This has some historical relevance, as white women have frequently endangered Black people and POC generally with fake tears.
In fact, it’s such a common trope, that TikTok user @notwildlin didn’t even have to explain what he was responding to in his TikTok on the subject, claiming that a different TikTok he made about the trend was taken down. Instead, he looked significantly at the camera after sharing the video of a white woman crying, then smiling. We get it:
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The TikTok got shared on Twitter, where people were reminded of the lynching of Emmett Till, a murder that started with the claims from white woman Carolyn Bryant that he was flirting with her. Decades later, she confessed the 14-year-old never did anything to her.
More recently, iPhones have been recording Karens everywhere attacking Black people, like the woman who pretended to cry to the police at a BBQ, or Amy Cooper, who pretended to be frightened of Black bird watcher Christian Cooper while on the phone with the police.
not even joking this was my first thought forreal
— peach prince$$
(@fiend444fire) June 16, 2021
Disability advocate Imani Barbarin also shared a TikTok perspective about how the fake crying is detrimental in ways outside of race, creating this idea that women fake their pain and tears, which could obviously be weaponized in all sorts of ways:
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She also explained that the videos are frightening for Black people because they “could come across any one of these women any single day” who might make false accusations against them. It doesn’t seem the criticism on Twitter has gotten through to TikTok creators yet, as the trend is still going.
*First Published: June 29, 2021, 6:49 am
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