TikTok-Toiletpaper

By Leonardo Puca

Topic: Digital Traces

Medium: Object

Material: Toilet paper, clothes hanger, poster

Institute: Politecnico di Milano

Year: a.a. 2022-2023

TikTok-Toiletpaper is a project with a provocative and ironic tone of voice that aims to provoke a reflection on the quantity/quality of content we are exposed to every day. In particular, the framing is focused on TikTok’s social platform, which is characterized by short-form videos and an interaction that can keep users glued to the screen for hours in the act of endlessly scrolling through video after video. The starting point is the personal data in TikTok’s history, this is made tangible through a metaphor that gets straight to the point without unnecessary turns of phrase: a roll of toilet paper. This creates a double link between where one used to watch these videos and the content of TikTok itself, which can often be compared to garbage to flush down the toilet.

Featured image of the project TikTok-Toiletpaper

Complementary image of the project TikTok-Toiletpaper

Metaphor used:

Since most of the time I’m used to watch Tiktoks at the toilet, I decided to represent the amount of meters I scrolled by using toiletpaper. This is useful because, using a paper roll, I can represent long distances within a compact form. Also we can push the metaphor further by considering that most of the videos I watch on tiktok are basically rubbish.

Intended Meaning:

We are not always aware about the amount of contents we are exposed to everyday on social media. TikTok-Toiletpaper is an attempt to make tangible something that usually is not: the amount of videos scrolled every day on TikTok. It's provocative tone of voice aims to question also the quality of the content we watch on this social media.

Source:

"video browsing history" on Tik-Tok