As national uproar surrounding the 2024 presidential election reached its peak with the reelection of Donald Trump, young left-leaning content creators started trends with sarcastic undertones that have taken over TikTok. Many in this group were disappointed by the election results and encouraged others to find community through humor in uncertain times.
“My biggest piece of advice to anyone who feels like retreating and isolating because they feel very hurt about the election results? Surround yourself with your community,” @sourinotsouri said in a video.
New communities of like-minded people began emerging from these trends, with some videos receiving thousands of likes. Some play into “crazy liberal” stereotypes while others use sarcasm to mock the increasingly popular misogynistic videos that were encouraged by the election results.
“I heard Nick Fuentes’ house burned down, and I would like to say I’ve known a lot of fires in my time and none of them would ever do that to some guy they didn’t know,” said @valmartinez78 in a TikTok that received almost 40,000 likes.
This video’s caption, “#NotAllFires,” matched the tone of others under the same hashtag. The trend is a play on “#NotAllMen” which Time magazine called “a bad-faith argument” that “redirects a discussion about sexism, misogyny, rape culture, or women’s rights to instead be about how none of that is (men’s) fault.”
Fuentes, a far-right livestreamer who has a severely misogynistic past, grew in popularity after releasing a controversial post on X.
“Hey b**** we control your bodies,” Fuentes said in the video attached to the post. His message referenced women’s abortion rights in the U.S. This statement came in response to Donald Trump being reelected as President.
The sound from this video became a viral TikTok sound, with women across the platform using it to express their concern for the hateful comments.
Some trends born from this video, however, are more light-hearted.
This video received 40,000 likes and depicts “tomorrow’s agenda” for a Democratic woman. It makes fun of some things the president-elect said during his campaign, like claiming kids in American schools are coming home with “sex-change operations,” and “massive cheating (by Democrats) in Philadelphia.”
The comments from that video are filled with sarcastic phrases and Generation Z slang: “Same but at 6 p.m., I have a cute lil’ post-birth (abortion),” said TikTok user @camdenpuff in an attempt to make fun of Trump’s false claims that Democrats would allow post-birth “executions.”
All of the trends surrounding the election center this obvious sarcasm. This sense of humor is widespread across the platform, and recently, across UT’s campus.
Students at UT have also started using social media to poke fun at the election with recent posts on Instagram and YikYak. This tumultuous election cycle allowed for a wide community of students with similar viewpoints to gather and utilize humor as a coping mechanism.
Texas Travesty, a satirical student publication at UT, contributed to this sarcasm-filled community with their recent Instagram posts.
“Dr. Seuss’s ‘Sam I Am’ is non-binary now. Thanks, liberals,” one post with over 300 likes read.
This UT community values comedic relief almost as much as it values action.
According to a study done by College Rover, over 90% of college students said they planned to vote in the 2024 election. At UT alone, a total of 24,744 students voted on Nov. 5, which highlights how longhorn students showed up and showed out for this election.
