Gather round friends, because I am about to introduce you to one of the most fucked trends to ever hit TikTok. It’s so fucked that you kinda have to wonder who the hell thought of creating it, and then why people started to do it in droves. Anyway, here’s what I will resentfully be calling the ‘crying trend’, even though it’s much more complex than that.
The ‘crying trend’, as you might imagine, involves a bunch of white women crying on cue, and then shutting the facade off in an instant, as sinister music plays in the background. Now, I’ll give you a moment to think about why that probably isn’t a good fkn idea.
The worst part of the entire trend is probably how the moment the women switch off the crying is when the music gets the most intense. It’s almost as if the act of white tears is a threat, and this is something that should be celebrated.
Naturally, nobody is celebrating this madness. Take a look at some of the videos created in this trend below. As you can imagine, videos like these are incredibly violent in nature towards POC.
Oh. A whole TikTok trend where… white women… show us how good they are at performatively crying on cue… pic.twitter.com/a9zHLocjru
— Chimene Suleyman (@chimenesuleyman) June 21, 2021
TikTok user @notwildlin created a response video talking in-depth about why this trend was so harmful to POC, but it was taken down because of apparent ‘hate speech’.
In its place, he made a video where he thoroughly suggested why the trend was so wrong, without saying a single word that TikTok would flag as harmful, and honestly, it’s just as powerful of a response.
“The challenge is to show how convincing that performance was. I’m not going to say anything. I’m not going to say anything.”
@notwildlin #stitch with @hannahstocking lmao y’all I didn’t even say anything last time and they came and snatched me up
The trend even made its way to Twitter, where POC slammed it (as they should) for perpetuating a narrative of performative white tears, which have time and time again resulted in the end of POC lives, especially in America.
“As a Black person I am constantly endangered by white women tears,” wrote one Twitter user.
“The power those waterworks have over a Black person’s LIFE is shown time and time again in cases like Emmet Till.”
https://twitter.com/AFRODIYKE/status/1405331832384655360?s=20
In a 2018 essay for the Guardian titled ‘How White Women Use Strategic Tears To Silence Women Of Colour’, journalist, author and academic Ruby Hamad hit the nail on the head as to why white tears are so violent in how they express denial and victimhood.
“Often, when I have attempted to speak to or confront a white woman about something she has said or done that has impacted me adversely, I am met with tearful denials and indignant accusations that I am hurting her,” Hamad wrote.
“My confidence diminished and second-guessing myself, I either flare up in frustration at not being heard (which only seems to prove her point) or I back down immediately, apologising and consoling the very person causing me harm.”
And the sentence that sums it all best:
“Their tearful displays are a form of emotional and psychological violence that reinforce the very system of white dominance that many white women claim to oppose.”
Oof.
And if you’re still confused, Hamad even included a video in her article that showcases how white tears and white victimhood go hand in hand.
In the following clip, Canadian television personality Jeanne Beker claims that Canadian singer-songwriter Jully Black is ‘attacking her’, spinning the narrative of a normal conversation into one of a Black oppressor, white victim.
Please watch below.
If you need me I’m going to be deleting TikTok for a hot minute. Shit is getting too fkn crazy.
