Contributor Max Alper discusses a selected ethnography of audio tropes he has collected while scrolling.
The concept of a meme pre-dates the internet age, however through the proliferation of both social media and streaming platforms, this form of new media not only pervades every corner of the web, but affects all aspects of society from the music industry, the stock market, to elections. And while there is plenty written on the visual aesthetics of meme culture, very little is written from the sound studies perspective. For the sake of brevity we will examine the sonic ecology of TikTok, a video sharing platform that allows users to not only post original video and audio with a number of in-app effects, but also encourages users to download, remix, and “duet” other user video and audio posts. This digital call and response has made TikTok a goldmine for sonic memes; we, as users, are literally passing audio files from one user to the next, to the next, etc.
Since quarantine began, I’ve been posting sound studies collections from TikTok on my own Instagram meme page, @la_meme_young. And while one could write an entire dissertation dedicated to these sonic memes of TikTok, we will use this opportunity to discuss a selected ethnography of audio tropes I have collected while scrolling this past month.
Bass Boosting and Deep Fried Distortion
A pre-TikTok meme staple, unfortunately known to many as “earr*pe”, with origins as early as pre-social media meme behemoth YTMND, bass boosted memes are a classic example of the tried and true internet expression “loud equals funny”. While many may stumble upon these sounds by accident while scrolling and almost blow out their earbuds, many (myself included) have purposely spent hours digging through the various bass boosted-adjacent hashtags to find the loudest, funniest renditions of previously normalized levels.
A more recent development on the bass boosted trajectory is the intentional misuse of earbud microphones for the sake of creating new means of clipping comedy. This adds a live performance element to the TikTok production process, one that coincidentally has much in common with the musical genre, Harsh Noise. Trends like these encourage physical interactivity from the user, to place their audio equipment in spots they’d usually never think to put it, such as in their mouth, inside their classical harp, or down the throat of a squeaky rubber chicken.
Autotune, Harmonizer, and Other Vocal FX
The use of auto-tune, harmonizer, and various otherwise musical in-app FX for the sake of remixing nonmusical source material has become an almost endless rabbithole of comedic sound content. Just as with the bass boosted earbud mics, this sonic trend has been developed through encouraging the user to explore each of these in-app vocal FX filters and apply them to their everyday video recordings. Suddenly, a funny story retelling, a brief selfie video, or a candid moment caught on camera becomes that much more effective in evoking a comedic reaction.
Whether or not there is a comedic intent behind the original source material is besides the point. TikTok relies on its user-generated content to be opensource, allowing strangers to download and remix one person’s tragedy into another person’s comedy by simply turning on the auto-tune filter. Any and all content is fair game for harmonized recycling and repurposing.
ASMR
The biological pleasure response to intimate aural and visual stimuli known as ASMR obviously predates TikTok and other social media, but it most certainly has become a well-known and profitable category of audio content creation because of it. Coined in 2010 by a Facebook research group dedicated to diving deeper into the tingly phenomenon, ASMR, or autonomous sensory meridian response, has become a multi-million dollar industry both online and IRL. Everything from soap cutting, animals playing, to simple at-home vlog videos can fall under the ASMR category, much of which depends on the heightening of intimate, repetitive sounds through close mic techniques.
So why does “loud equal funny” in 2021? I recently asked this question to some of my college students in Puerto Rico, all of whom are Gen Z Tiktok users. The responses varied, but words that were repeatedly brought up were “wrong” and “raw”. All of the above styles of TikTok audio are made by users intentionally using top of the line social media tools somewhat incorrectly, at least according to the developers of the technology. Of course you’re not supposed to stick your earbud mic down your throat, just as you’re not supposed to scream at the top of your lungs through a fancy autotune filter or apply scotch tape directly to the grill of a condenser mic. Perhaps it’s by using these audio tools in unexpectedly “wrong” ways that young people continue to keep it fresh; the more extreme and unexpected the sound is, the more “based” it can be. I’ve been told that’s a good thing.
The algorithm is constantly shifting, one specific interaction with a silly sounding video on TikTok will intentionally lead to ten more simply by continuing to scroll through the “For You” page. And as meme trends change, new apps will eventually emerge, and with them new “wrong” sounds to laugh at. Let’s meet back in a year and hear what sounds good then.
