“PoV: You are reading an academic article.” The memetic performance of affiliation in TikTok’s platform vernacular

This article investigates the characteristics and communicative values of the popular PoV meme on TikTok to uncover mechanisms of community building on the platform. An analysis of the content, form, and stance of 250 videos revealed that creators of PoV memes lip-sync to audio remediated from pop culture and mimic how they imagine “you” would act in a given scenario. I offer the concept of “echoic affiliation” to describe how PoV memes leverage TikTok’s “use this sound” function to construct ephemeral bonds between users. Furthermore, PoV memes textually articulate multiple perspectives, producing intersubjective encounters that reflect a platform imaginary in which “the algorithm” efficiently clusters similar people on the same “side” of the app. In the conclusions, I present a novel definition of PoV memes and reflect on the pivotal role of affiliation for TikTok’s platform vernacular.