Some Black TikTok creators are refusing to create a dance to Megan Thee Stallion’s new song “Thot Shit” in an effort to show how some white creators steal and fail to credit trends on the app. Megan released “Thot Shit” on June 11 and while it’s been commercially successful — with the music video garnering over 11 million views — the song has yet to take over TikTok with a viral dance challenge like many of her previous singles.
This, Mashable first reported, is because many Black choreographers banded together to go on “strike” and stop creating dances that become popularized and monetized by other creators who don’t credit them.
“We observed over the years on TikTok that most dances on the app are originated by Black creators and creators who aren’t Black will water it down to do the bare minimum of the dance and claim it as their own,” Jazmine Moore, a 20-year-old on the platform, told the outlet. “So when this song popped up everyone knew that someone was going to make a dance to it. But Black creators collectively agreed not to make one.”
“People still need to acknowledge Black creators and not ignore us in any community that we partake in,” she added. “To not belittle us or demonize our content for their amusement. We have each other in the long [run] and will succeed collectively as a family.”
Racism and cultural appropriation have been long-standing issues on TikTok, with Addison Rae most recently receiving backlash for performing several popular TikTok dances, created by Black users, on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and failing to give them any credit.
In 2019, TikTok moderators also admitted to discriminatory practices that Black users said were suppressing their videos. The company also claimed a “technical glitch” caused videos speaking out about racism or George Floyd protests to be pushed down or removed all together.
To further the point, one creator named Erick Louis pretended to make a “Thot Shit” dance on TikTok. In the video, he sways to the song, but then flips off the camera in solidarity with the strike, writing, “Sike. This app would be nothing without blk people.” However, videos have surfaced of some white creators actually following the “dance.” So far, Megan herself has not commented on the strike. See clips on Twitter below.