‘#OkBoomer, time to meet the Zoomers’: studying the memefication of intergenerational politics on TikTok

ABSTRACT

TikTok, a short video platform featuring content between 15 and 60 seconds long, has become a popular and rapidly growing social media application around the world. As a platform catering for light entertainment, TikTok champions virality and encourages memetic remixes. Meme videos, mostly featuring lip-syncs, dance routines, and skits, have become one of the defining features of the platform. These seemingly trivial videos have been utilised by young TikTokers to advocate for various causes. This paper uses #OkBoomer memes as a case study to examine the political culture of young people and Gen Z in particular. By analysing how intergenerational politics has been ‘memefied’, this study delineates how Gen Z imagines and expresses a generational sentiment towards ‘Boomers’ as the imagined other. They do so through short video cultures and practices on TikTok, drawing upon the networked experiences of their peers. Specifically, the paper considers the key controversial issues, meme forms and meme functions across the #OkBoomer memes on TikTok, and its eventual mainstreaming in society.

KEYWORDS:

• Memes
• intergenerational politics
• TikTok
• Gen Z
• Boomer

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 All cited TikTok videos are listed as multimedia references in Appendix 2.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jing Zeng

Dr. Jing Zeng is a Senior Research and Teaching Associate at the Department of Communication and Media Research (IKMZ), University of Zurich. Her research interests include digital culture, online activism, and science communication [email: [email protected]].

Crystal Abidin

Dr. Crystal Abidin is a socio-cultural anthropologist of vernacular Internet cultures, particularly young people’s relationships with Internet celebrity, online visibility, and social media pop cultures. She is Associate Professor, Principal Research Fellow, and ARC DECRA Fellow in Internet Studies at Curtin University [email: [email protected]].