TikTok’s latest viral trend sees women pretending to cry, and it’s had a lot of backlash on social media.
Did you know that crying can actually be used as a weapon?
It’s a process called ‘weaponising your tears’, and it’s often used by white women to gain sympathy and avoid accountability.
If you take that one step further, ‘weaponising your tears’ is actually a form of white privilege that can also be used to silence women of colour.
So, why are we taking about the ‘weaponising of tears’? Well, a new TikTok trend has emerged that’s sparked a viral debate.
Read on to find out more…
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Women are fake crying on TikTok
A new TikTok trend is going viral this week that involves fake crying.
Women are uploading videos of themselves pretending to cry, and some of the acting is actually really convincing.
Then, they snap back into their normal selves, crack a smile and show that they were actually just faking it.
The trend is also known as the ‘Turn It Off’ trend as when the soundtrack says the words ‘turn it off’, women stop crying and essentially ‘turn off’ their emotions.
See an example below.
The trend is getting backlash
According to TikTok, the trend was supposed to be a lighthearted acting challenge to see how convincing your fake cry could be. But now, it’s getting a lot of backlash online.
“White women and that fake crying TikTok trend makes me not only pissed but scared too. For many reasons. It’s so so damaging,” one person wrote on Twitter.
Another said: “New trend now on Tiktok of women crying then suddenly stopping to see how convincing it was. Have to be careful what you say on the matter but yea, how evil & deceitful. Imagine being able to break down and the stop & then think what you could convince people to believe.”
So, why is is getting so much outrage?
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Here’s why it’s problematic
The challenge has has a lot of uproar from predominantly black communities on TikTok.
Social media users are claiming that this challenge is evidence of women being able to ‘weaponise their tears‘, a process where white women use strategic tears to silence women of colour.
“The new TikTok trend of white women fake crying is so f***ing ugly, especially any that ends with them smiling like they served something good. Literally the face of someone ready to weaponize in their tears at a moment’s notice,” one person tweeted.
TikTok users are arguing that the ‘tone deaf’ challenge ignores how many African-American people have died because of women pretending to cry, specifically Emmet Till.
Another said: “The trend of white women crying on tiktok and then SNAPPING back to normal is not funny actually. As a black person I am constantly endangered by white women tears. The power those water works have over a black persons LIFE is shown time & time again in cases like Emmet Till.”
“Ok so the TikTok trend of people (specificly white women) crying and then just stopping is absolutely terrifying, as many POC on my TL have pointed out, since many POC of color have been killed via white tears,” added a third person.
Others have also added that if you put issues of race aside, the challenge is also problematic because the act of faking emotions is not funny.
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