Every Backup Account focuses on just one TikTok. Follow me on IG where the real jokes are.
Welcome to the second season of the Backup Account. My first season focused on brighter spots and introductions, and this season is focused on the dark side of TikTok: Money.
This past month the internet exploded (again) over Taylor Swift, her sexual preferences, and her position as a gay icon. It essentially forced her to (again) come out as straight. I have yet to listen to a Taylor album front to back but thanks to the TikTok algorithm, I felt duly informed on all the hubbub.
One of my day jobs is hosting a weekly music news podcast for a German telecommunications company. Once a week something Taylor Swift-related comes across our team’s desk, reminding me how little of a Taylor Swift gay I am. Regardless of her music industry chokehold, it wasn’t until TikTok that Taylor-themed content ever appeared on my social feeds.
This week’s TikTok is not about Taylor Swift coming out herself, but one of the most viral, confusing, and slightly offensive coming-out moments on the app. Imagine you are a mom at home waiting for a text message to pick up your daughter from the exorbitantly overpriced concert you gifted her. She calls earlier than expected, you answer, but instead of your daughter on the other end, it is the singer from the band. Marie Ulven Ringheim aka girl in red. She’s informing you, in front of thousands of screaming fans, that your daughter identifies as bisexual. Watch the clip here
During the pandemic, a simple question was flooding lesbian TikTok’s comment section: “Do you listen to girl in red?”
It was a queer-coded rhetorical question, a cheeky nod to the unapologetically lezzy lyrics of a rising 20-year-old singer/songwriter. If liked by the content creator, this would be considered a confirmation they were indeed queer identifying. girl in red used to be a niche enough artist to pull this side nudge off. That was until Taylor Swift entered the chat. After the coming out TikTok amassed 8.5 million likes, Taylor’s team chose girl in red as one of her opening acts for the 2023 Era’s Tour, the largest-grossing concert tour of all time.
Born and raised in a remote town in Norway, girl in red represents a new era of queer independent artists flourishing far, far away from LGBTQIA+ hubs. Sure, the internet has been connecting queer people for 30+ years, but girl in red is at the center of how algorithms and identity-driven trends are breaking the convention that you must move from your small town to find a large fanbase. The new math running the internet is getting good at putting us in touch with each other in seemingly wide-open spaces
I desperately wanted this viral moment to be the dopamine hit it was for millions of others, but instead it left me feeling queasy. It reeked of the problematic side of this new online vacuum of digi-queerness. Ultimately, it was the well-meaning young fans who boosted the initial likes and comments on this video. These homegrown signal boosts ping the algorithm to analyze for…crowd cheering… coming-out story… mother-daughter…trending musicians… What happens next is the opening of RuPaul’s Pandora's Box of late-stage capitalism.
I have nothing to add about coming out in the modern-day world that hasn’t been summed up in Anna Mark’s NYTimes Opinion piece on the yassified Taylor Swift. But I have been thinking about all of those “Do you listen to girl in red?” comments still floating around. If coded comments are one example of teenage queers “gay bar-ing” online space, did girl in red going Taylor Swift level viral just unintentionally police raid said lesbian bar?
To put this into perspective, random girl in red Ali’s coming out TikTok was viewed roughly 35 million times while the 1997 Ellen Degeneres coming out episode was viewed by 42 million. FML
The same technology that is road-testing my interest in Taylor Swift a decade past its expiration date is what is forcing young people to rapidly mutate how they code themselves from “old people” and bullies. I remember how scary it was to try and rent a gay movie from the Blockbuster. Why does it feel like young people’s version of that today is the equivalent of a scene in Terminator? I don’t see how young people can keep up at the pace TikTok has set for them to remain untouchably adolescent when the algorithm is moving at T-1000 pace.
So now the question begs not “are you lesbian?” but “do you STILL listen to girl in red?”
Keep your eyes and ears peeled as the next edition of the Backup Account podcast will be dropping soon where Leo Herrera and I get under the hood of what going viral looks like for a queer creator.
Speaking of cash, if you’re a financial supporter of Backup Account, thank you for the rose. Your patronage supports my independent queer audio documentary work.