The Witches Of Tiktok
2020
digital ethnography - social media trends
Generation Z is the generation that has never known a world without the internet. Digital natives live and grow in their realities constantly switching from the physical world to the online world. This work explores the intricate mirroring of the online and physical realities; as well as the mutual modifications that operate between humans and technology.
I lead a digital ethnography research on the rising witch community on TikTok, and delved into the duality experienced by people who grew up in a world where physical and digital are tightly intertwined. The result was a video essay that introduces the research and its philosophical conclusions.
Essay script
Generation Z or “Gen Z” is the generation born between 1996 and 2010 that has never known a world without the internet.
Generation Z or “Gen Z” is the generation born between 1996 and 2010 that has never known a world without the internet.
Digital natives navigate in their realities alternating between the physical world and the online world. In what appears as a duality, what is the nature of young people’s relationship with their realities?
According to the Institute for Business Value, more than two thirds of Gen-Z spend their free time online.
This research is an attempt at investigating how this online world affects young people’s development and what role it plays in their realities.
To do so, I explored TikTok, Gen Z’s favorite social media platform and the most-downloaded app of 2020 on iOS and Android. It became the fastest-growing social media platform in history after it surpassed two billion downloads. TikTok has over 1.2 billion active users in 2021 and remains unique in its demographic dominated by Gen z.
TikTok’s success rests on its widely diverse content and an algorithm that delivers personalized selections on your For You Page. It is constantly learning from you and shows you things that you have demonstrated you want to watch or things you could be interested in, which makes it highly addictive. After a while using the app, it can be quite disturbing to see how well TikTok knows you.
TikTok’s design facilitates and empowers self-expression which allowed Gen Z to take it over and turn it into a place where raw authenticity is celebrated.
The platform fosters a variety of communities, groups and trends engaging young people that share the same interests, beliefs, sexual orientation or culture which empowers them and give them a sense of belongingness.
Scrolling down my TikTok FYP, I stumbled across videos of girls practicing witchcraft with the hashtag WitchTok. I’m not sure how it got there but that was my first encounter with the community. WitchTok is a community of witches on TikTok that share their craft through short videos. The community is representative of a new generation that is more and more drawn to alternative forms of spirituality. TikTok offers a platform of expression for a new age of witchcraft that tries to de-stigmatise the practice. The #witchtok hashtag has received over 8.4 billion views. Scrolling down a witchy For You Page you might come accross short videos of rituals, tutorials for spells, tips for tools and supplies, occult object collections, altar set ups, tarot card readings as well as humoristic clips.
Witchtok is a diverse world that hosts various communities of green witches, crystal lovers, baby witches and experimented witches, brujas and brujos, queer witches, creative witches and much more.
It is not surprising that Gen Z feels drawn to witchcraft as it is an inclusive practice that encourages soul searching and mindfulness. Moreover, Witchcraft has always been synonymous with the independence of women. The practice is therefore appealing to young women, or non-binary persons, who feel similarly excluded from the mainstream; ‘othered’ by society.
I got in touch with TikTok witches by leaving comments on witchtok videos. I managed to establish contact with a do
zen witches and created a group discussion to encourage exchanges and facilitate my research. They quickly started talking about the things they had in common and were curious to know more about each other’s practices. They answered my questions and shared with me some of their personal practices.
When I asked them if their practice was an attempt at escaping reality, some of them disagreed. The practice isn’t an escape for them but a part of their realities, a practice that helps them face it. They give meaning to their realities through astrology interpretations and try to control them with manifestations, affirmations, and the intentions they put in their spells.Young people are in the process of creating their own reality, a reality that answers their needs. There is no “real world” they escape from and “alternative world” where they escape to but rather an arrangement they make to create their own reality in which they can feel stable. Whether the things people believe in are real or not, they give sense to life and meanings to things. The
y create an order and allow people to arrange systems that work for them. These systems are made of beliefs, rituals, rules, images, languages…
Building an identity and creating a personal reality is an ongoing process that relies on empirical learning and experimentation. Young people find inspi
rations and models around them but also online by joining communities, following influencers and building their online identities.
The online world plays a role in young people’s development and in the creation of their realities. What could seem like escapism is in fact part of their reality as part of their development happens online. They modify online realities and are modified in return which wouldn’t happen without this other reality in their environment. The French philosopher and physician George Canguilhem writes in The Knowledge of Life: "To live is to radiate, it is to organize the environment from a reference center of modification which cannot itself be referred without losing its original meaning. "
Mankind is indissociable from its tools, this idea has been explored multiple times throughout our History. In Greek m
ythology, Prometheus steals fire from the Gods to release us from our weakness. He therefore gave us the tools to create our environment and the means to invent ourselves. The ability
to arrange our own world by shaping and organizing the matter is the essence of man. This new generation grew up in a world where the matter it can work with is also digital.
To live is to make our environment our own and to create. One does not solely meet a finished world where nothing is left for interpretation. A finished world is fatal for men. We cannot be separated from our environment and we organize a sphere around us with which we become one. George Canguilhem calls it in The Knowledge of Life, his Umwelt.
The online world is now part of gen z reality just as much as the physical world. The physical reality feeds the digital reality and vice versa, one cannot be considered without taking into account the other. The online world cannot be seen as an escape but there are escapes within it just as there are escapes within the physical world.
y create an order and allow people to arrange systems that work for them. These systems are made of beliefs, rituals, rules, images, languages…
Building an identity and creating a personal reality is an ongoing process that relies on empirical learning and experimentation. Young people find inspi
rations and models around them but also online by joining communities, following influencers and building their online identities.
The online world plays a role in young people’s development and in the creation of their realities. What could seem like escapism is in fact part of their reality as part of their development happens online. They modify online realities and are modified in return which wouldn’t happen without this other reality in their environment. The French philosopher and physician George Canguilhem writes in The Knowledge of Life: "To live is to radiate, it is to organize the environment from a reference center of modification which cannot itself be referred without losing its original meaning. "
Mankind is indissociable from its tools, this idea has been explored multiple times throughout our History. In Greek m
ythology, Prometheus steals fire from the Gods to release us from our weakness. He therefore gave us the tools to create our environment and the means to invent ourselves. The ability
to arrange our own world by shaping and organizing the matter is the essence of man. This new generation grew up in a world where the matter it can work with is also digital.
To live is to make our environment our own and to create. One does not solely meet a finished world where nothing is left for interpretation. A finished world is fatal for men. We cannot be separated from our environment and we organize a sphere around us with which we become one. George Canguilhem calls it in The Knowledge of Life, his Umwelt.
The online world is now part of gen z reality just as much as the physical world. The physical reality feeds the digital reality and vice versa, one cannot be considered without taking into account the other. The online world cannot be seen as an escape but there are escapes within it just as there are escapes within the physical world.