Open the TikTok app and scroll for a few minutes. You're probably going to find a creator, big or small, lip-synching along to an audio track with the distinct voice of Sesame Street's favorite red Muppet. But the Elmo audio that you're likely giggling along to may be unintentionally perpetuating digital blackface in a way that's unique to the app.
After blowing up online for his iconic feud with Rocco earlier this year, Elmo has become a bit of a viral celebrity for his sass. Naturally, audio clips featuring his voice have since become a script for thousands of videos on TikTok.
Among these popular audio clips is a snippet from Elmo's appearance on The Tonight Show, where he is learning how to cook with host Jimmy Fallon. In listing his ingredients, Elmo states, "Onions, garlic, celery, balsAAAAMIC vinegah," with heavy emphasis on the vowel sound in "balsamic" and a non-rhotic pronunciation that drops the “r” at the end of "vinegar." This specific pronunciation has led some TikTokkers to identify Elmo as Black, an idea that has floated around the internet before. It's also a key vocal note that has led to two distinct, physical interpretations in parody skits using Elmo's particular pronunciation across TikTok: joking emphasis and exaggerated flirting.
These different explications usually delineate a clear line amongst TikTok creators: Black creators, who often recognize the Blackness in Elmo's speech patterns and naturally use it for emphasis, and… everyone else, who uses the same audio flirtatiously. In his own video, TikTok creator Justin Jordan, aka @freddiesroomate, explains why this latest viral take on Elmo's voice and mannerisms demonstrates a deep-rooted internalization of Black stereotypes.
In his video, Jordan details the history of Elmo's voice actors, which includes Kevin Clash and Ryan Dillon. Clash, who is a Black man, voiced Elmo beginning in 1984, when the Muppet joined the Sesame Street main cast after being voiced by three previous actors. Clash is what Jordan calls "one of Elmo's most prolific voice actors," and he naturally put a lot of his own speech patterns into Elmo's signature voice. But the balsamic vinegar clip that is circulating TikTok comes from Ryan Dillon, a white man who succeeded Clash after he resigned amid sexual abuse allegations in 2012. And, as Jordan mentions in his video, Dillon is approximating Clash's voice into his version of Elmo. (Mashable reached out to Sesame Street and Dillon for comment on his vocal approach, and they did not reply as of press time.)
While the history of Elmo's mannerisms is interesting, that's not where TikTok's digital blackface comes into play.
"The joke, implicitly, is that Elmo talks Black," Jordan told Mashable. "So every joke that's using an Elmo audio is 'Elmo sounds Black.' And then they add the characteristics or the implicit biases that they have [about Black people] onto Elmo. It's 'Oh, I'm going to make him sound a little bit flirty and sexual, which Elmo is not. And that's the bad part."
What is digital blackface?
According to Merriam Webster, digital blackface is "the use by white people of digital depictions of Black or brown people or skin tones especially for the purpose of self-representation or self-expression." The dictionary definition subtly minimizes the effects of digital blackface by calling it "self-expression." In reality, many Black people have likened it to the modern iteration of centuries of Black minstrelsy, made anew by the internet — it's most often a mockery of Black people and culture, digitally perpetuating harmful Black stereotypes like hypersexuality, aggression, or general over-animation.
In the case of Elmo, digital blackface manifests in both the lip-sync interpretations mentioned above and the way some TikTok creators mimic Elmo's voice themselves. "When people make their own audios using their own voices to make it funnier, they emphasize the AAVE [African American Vernacular English], or the non-rhotic sounds in Elmo to make them sound more hood, or street, or more sexual," said Jordan. "Why is the culture, specifically on the internet, when we want to make things more sexual, more aggressive, more threatening, we add [Black speech patterns] to our language?"
The internet first more broadly became aware of digital blackface in the form of reaction GIFs. We can argue about whether GIF usage is falling out of fashion all we want, but it's long been a trend that the "funniest" and most viral reaction GIFs and memes feature Black faces. From Oprah to NBA players to Real Housewives, you've likely laughed at a GIF that turns Black people's facial expressions, mannerisms, or quotes into caricatures of their original context. And it's not limited to one platform — I've personally noticed it more broadly on apps like Twitter and in more intimate digital spaces like an iMessage group chat.
Why is the culture, specifically on the internet, when we want to make things more sexual, more aggressive, more threatening, we add [Black speech patterns] to our language?
As the internet evolves, so does digital blackface, beyond just GIFs. Gen Z has recently come under fire for perpetuating what many young people on the internet claim to be "internet slang," a certain cache of slang common in online spaces featuring words and phrases like "chile," "go off queen," and "periodt." These phrases, which pepper the comment sections of TikToks and make frequent appearances in viral tweets, almost always originate from AAVE.
"The language of TikTok is a bit of a counterculture. People are very proud of trends and ways of speaking that will 'start' on TikTok," Dr. Daniel Hieber, a research linguist who also creates linguistics content on TikTok, told Mashable. "Some of the audios that go viral are precisely because the language is attention-grabbing, it's interesting, it's unique. And I think one of the reasons why people find certain audios attention-grabbing is precisely because they have ways of speaking that aren't familiar to them. A lot of times, what that means is ways of speaking that are spoken by non-prestigious dialects or non-mainstream dialects, [like AAVE]."
On TikTok, digital blackface continues to transform. In some of its earlier versions, it manifested visually, as in the dance trends predominantly made by Black creators going viral once a white influencer performed them. This led to the #BlackTikTok strike, which happened as a larger conversation about race and appropriation ignited on the app, in which users began discussing who can and should use certain audio tracks, trends, and filters.
Because the platform is so audio-centric, with the ability to lift soundtracks from any video, digital blackface offenses will also often happen when a creator lip-syncs along to a track taken out of context, or when tracks featuring Black voices are remade to emphasize a joke at the expense of the Blackness it features. The range of digital blackface via TikTok's audio tracks varies greatly, from the covertness of Elmo's voice interpretations to the overt parody of Nicki Minaj and Nene Leakes' sound bites.
In some of the worst (and also most ridiculous) audio cases, white creators will take a viral sound clip originally said by a Black person and completely get the point wrong in a new viral take. In one of these recent trends, Wendy Osefo of The Real Housewives of Potomac misquotes a Nicki Minaj lyric and states "Am I a Nicki fan? Pull up in the Sri Lanka, what!" to demonstrate how avid of a Nicki fan she is. While Black creators originally circulated the clip to laugh at the glaring misquote of Minaj’s “Monster” verse, the audio took off even more when white creators began using the clip to genuinely showcase a prime example of a personality trait or claim — essentially spreading the opposite message of the original meme as made by Black people, abetted by the parody of Osefo's voice.
They're just calling [it] internet speak, rather than being aware of the fact like 'Oh, this actually isn't internet speak so much as it is African American English.'
This happened on every level, from casual TikTok users to big names like Jojo Siwa. Siwa used the audio track to ask "Have you gotten a lot of hate?" as the sound played "Am I a Nicki fan?" and then provided several funny examples of the types of hate messages she receives on screen while the track played "Pull up in the Sri Lanka." This kind of wild reimagining of a trend made by Black people about Black people demonstrates the willful ignorance white TikTok users often have about audio and trend origins. And the total disconnect from Black users on the app is, at the very least, embarrassing, and at most, potentially abetting the spread of harmful Black stereotypes as trends morph.
"Usually, by the time a linguistic trend [like the appropriation of AAVE as internet speak] starts getting in the public consciousness, it's too late. It's already been ingrained," said Hieber. "It is, in some ways, pretty unfortunate that all of these features of African American English that people are just picking up on [for] the first time, not realizing where it comes from. They're just calling [it] internet speak, rather than being aware of the fact like 'Oh, this actually isn't internet speak so much as it is African American English.'"
Even when creators are aware of the AAVE roots of a word or phrase, TikTok's trend culture still encourages them to make the joke anyway, to jump on the latest trends in order to stay relevant on the app. Your FYP is an echo chamber. Sunn m'Cheaux, a Harvard lecturer who teaches Gullah, an English-based Creole language spoken by Black people in South Carolina and Georgia, issued a reminder in his own video: "Quick heads-up for fellow Black creators of comedic content that's centered on our language and culture, particularly language: Never let our language or dialect be the butt of the joke."
So is Elmo canceled? Can white people not use audio clips voiced by Black people?
No, Elmo is not canceled. In fact, that was something Jordan wanted to emphasize in our conversation. "I'm not canceling Elmo! Elmo's my guy. I'm not trying to exclude Black people from the joke. We can make jokes about Black people. I just want us to be mindful of who and what we are punching down on."
Digital blackface is an issue that deserves attention and dedicated resources, but it shouldn't start and end with individual response. Yes, it'd be nice if every single user on TikTok implicitly knew the rights and wrongs of how to interact with socially sensitive content, but real change has to happen on a more systemic and educational level. Online culture needs to continue to strive for more mindfulness and inclusivity, especially given how quickly TikTok trend cycles move.
"The problem isn't the features on TikTok itself. It's as a culture, we think Blackness is funny. So we have to change culture, and people have been trying to do that for literally hundreds of years. We have a long way ahead," said Jordan. "It's not gonna happen overnight, and I don't even think it's gonna happen in my lifetime. But it's just [about] making people more aware of the cultural tools they're using to be successful."
Black creators are not responsible for teaching the rest of the internet how to conduct themselves; in fact, the onus falls on non-Black users to create a culture in which Black creators have the freedom to make whatever content they'd like, and where non-Black creators aren’t appropriating in the first place. But if creators like Jordan are willing to put in the time and effort to offer educational content, it is our responsibility as fellow internet users to have open ears and heed their advice.
"I think if you're an individual user on this app, I think your responsibility is to just know why you think [something is] funny," said Jordan. "What are the cultural elements going into [the joke]? Why are we all laughing at this? And then once we all collectively, or most of us, agree, why we are pointing at this and laughing, then we can actually start to have conversations about intent or non-intent or malicious intent."
Some might deem this bare-bones effort as yet another way to censor our freedom of speech. That internet wokeness has taken it too far once again! Hardly. In reality, it's in everyone's best interests to make the internet a kinder, more respectful space for all, even if that means sacrificing a TikTok joke or two when it's not your place to make one.
So, before filming your next silly little 15-second video, take a second to think about the joke you're making: What message are you communicating? And are you degrading an entire community to do so?
Let's be honest: Your Elmo lip-synch video wasn't gonna get that many views anyway.
Topics TikTok
