Improbable conversations: Interactional dynamics in TikTok duets

Reciprocal conversational interaction is seemingly a logical impossibility on the asynchronous short-form video platform TikTok. Yet users overcome the constraints and affordances of the platform to create the appearance of synchronous interaction by co-opting the duet feature, which allows users to respond to a previously recorded video, generating a new video in which the original video (OV) and the response video (RV) are displayed side by side. We examine how TikTok duetters create the illusion of conversing together in real time by applying conversation analysis methods to a judgment sample of TikTok duets, with a focus on strategies of turn-taking and overlapping. OVs and RVs collaborate to various extents in co-constructing duet conversations; OVs by explicitly or implicitly inviting duets, and RVs by orienting to OVs through the positioning and timing of their responses. Through these interactional dynamics, duetters performatively evoke participant roles, personae, and situational contexts, while simultaneously pursuing broader communicative goals of entertaining and growing an audience of followers.