SOCIAL MEDIA
Tik Tok, Feta Cheese, and Doggface
What viral phenomena say about human connections
Like seemingly everyone else on the planet, my wife and I made a savory plate of pasta for dinner a couple weeks ago based on a recipe we heard about through Tik Tok. The recipe, a gooey combination of feta cheese, cherry tomatoes, olive oil, red pepper flakes, and basil served over whatever pasta you have on hand is the definition of a pantry meal. As many people had told us, it was in fact delicious.
The recipe was born two years ago when Finnish food blogger Jenni Hayrinen (@liemessa) got hungry, craved feta, and added what she had on hand to the mix. But what she launched was not merely a recipe, it was a revolution.
Since she originally posted her version of the baked feta deliciousness several Tik Tokers have helped it gain worldwide fame. Its popularity has led feta sales to skyrocket globally, with cherry tomatoes and basil also receiving a major boost.
As of this writing, the hashtag #fetapasta has over 722 million views on Tik Tok alone. That’s in addition to the 21,000 posts on Instagram using the same hashtag and the 733% increase in Google searches for “feta” in a one-week period in early February of this year.
We have had feta in the U.S. since the 1880’s, when a wave of Greek immigrants brought the cheese with them on their journey to the East Coast. So other than the obvious, which is that this seemingly simple list of ingredients melds together to create an insanely craveable whole, what has turned this into a global phenomenon?
The answer lies in Tik Tok itself. Unlike other social media networks, Tik Tok is inherently unpretentious. It not only lets us in on the joke, it celebrates the fact that we are the joke. Our dancing, however ill-advised, is welcomed on Tik Tok. As is our singing, our tripping over things, our charcuterie boards, and an endless stream of otherwise unexceptional aspects of modern day life.
Unlike Facebook, the ultimate fake news super spreader, Twitter, where digital courage that leads to downright nastiness is a way of life, and Instagram, with its hyper-stylized version(s) of our real lives, Tik Tok is largely unvarnished. Prior to the feta explosion, arguably its most famous video was of a man named Doggface riding a longboard and drinking cranberry juice on his way to work.
The feta recipe is dead simple, and it’s delicious. But it’s what’s at the heart of Tik Tok that led to a global run on cheese made from sheep’s milk: a celebration of our dirt, our quirks, and our ability to laugh at ourselves. Tik Tok uses our differences to bring us together, rather than using them to deepen our divide.
I for one am hoping that Tik Tok’s foundation is the future of all social media. We will all be better off for it, and we’ll enjoy some damn good pasta along the way.
