Hey Kids, The Coolest New TikTok Meme Is… History?
"me realising I'll never be able to meet cool historical figures like Julius Caesar"
What cool trend are the youth of TikTok involved in now? Is it skateboarding? Some kind of new street drug? A robust dance party? No — it’s a nuanced and hilarious memefication of global history.
That’s right! The cool new TikTok trend is history, baby!
Honestly, why are Gen Z such nerds? I love them.
I love them so much.
I love history, but when I was a youth, everybody was mostly into throwing apples at an old signpost across the road from my school, not the specifics of reparation after WW1. And I knew a LOT about reparations. Shame.
Twitter user @NadiaJaferey put together a huge viral thread of history TikToks, alerting all the millennials that loiter on the site. It’s definitely worth following.
literally obsessed with teens posting history tiktoks so here’s a thread:
— nadia jaferey (@nadiajaferey) October 25, 2019
I love this trend tho — it’s so cool how much information and humour and tone that these people can get into a 15 second video. For example — this one is probably my favourite, because it’s an entirely succinct and brutally relevant commentary on colonialism.
Or like, this one is a really great summary of a whole bunch of complicated historical mechanics that helped lead to WW2 — if I was studying, I’d simply memorise it. Easy.
There are even TikTok users who are ALL ABOUT HISTORY full time, like… history influencers. TikTok artist @slaviccaesar just fucking froths for history 24/7, and has videos titled things like “me realising I’ll never be able to meet cool historical figures like Julius Caesar”.
Honestly… go off. That’s a mood! A historical mood!
Or like, this guy has a bunch of accurate historical uniforms and costumes, and uses that for the majority of his content. Generally, as a rule, men with ANY form of historical uniforms in their possession are a big red flag, but I gotta say I’m charmed by the amount of historical information I’m getting.
The only non red flag uniform for men to own is SEXY FIREFIGHTER.
There’s just so much history to enjoy, thanks TikTok!