A previously trending term used during early quarantine to delineate between 'bland' posts on
TikTok and more emerging uses of the app, including offbeat 'Gen Z humor' and strange/humourous challenges or inside jokes. 'Straight
TikTok' denotes videos of 'Thirst Traps', videos made for the creator to seem attractive or appealing, or videos made by the mainstream
internet celebrities made famous by, or partaking in,
TikTok e.g. Noah Beck or Charli D'amelio.
The use of 'Straight' to describe this type of feed could be because 'Straight
TikTok' featured videos produced by conventionally attractive heterosexual female and
male users for audiences of their opposite gender. It may have also originated from the perception that non-conventional humor and styles were commonly engaged with by people who were not heterosexual or cisgendered (like Emo or Scene culture).
The term became outdated near the end of
2020 as the trends it delineated between declined (like 'FrogTok' and other 'sides' of TikTok), and the changing culture of TikTok which saw a wide acceptance of liking TikTok celebrities and enjoying others' and ones own attractiveness without societal guilt or '
cringe'.
Despite the term literally originating from heterosexuality, sexuality often did not designate which version of the algorithmic For You Page a user of TikTok was on, simply the type of videos in their feed. E.g. a straight person could be on 'Gay TikTok' and a
homosexual person could be on 'Straight TikTok'.
