TikTok has become a synonym for short video creation. As it has a massive user-base, we all know that most of the viral internet trends originate on this platform. Now, the trends that go viral on the platform are mostly funny, creative and challenging like the “Gesture Challenge” that we saw previously. However, a recent Indian-trend on TikTok has been deemed as an act of “promoting colourism” and some TikTokers are really angry about it.
The “Black Skin Trend” is a trend which recently went viral on TikTok amongst the Indian users. It basically involves a person digitally darkening his/her skin and sadly lip-syncing with the once-top-charted song “Why This Kolaveri Di” from a Tamil film named “3”. Now, at the end of the video, as the users’ face brightens up with a digital “white” face, he/she becomes happy.
After this trend went viral, many netizens were outraged by the inner message of “colourism” that the videos are spreading. These videos are not at all creative or challenging in any way. However, they are successfully spreading the message that “people with black skin are sad while people with white skin are happy”.
Now, the trend tried to capitalise on a specific line of the song which goes like this — “White skin girl girl, girl heart black, eyes eyes meet meet, my future dark.”. There is no mention of a “black skin girl” anywhere in the song. Users have completely missed the point of the song and are just using the song’s catchy tune to spread this garbage.
“In the film, a beautiful light-skinned woman who has a ‘black heart’ is impervious to the hero’s love. The song “did not explicitly refer to dark skin, but nevertheless, Kolaveri Di’s catchy tunes and lyrics become creative fodder for these youths to stage their playful and dramatic performances of skin colour mutating from dark to light,”, said Radhika Parameswaran, an Indiana University professor and an activist against colourism.
There are many people who are despising this trend and contributing their part to stop this racist trend. You can check out how one of the users reacted to this trend and there are many more netizens like him who are debating against this.
Although TikTok is the biggest short video creation and sharing platform in the market, the platform has been involved in numerous controversies like this one. So, to the people who are following this trend, if you are reading this, please stop creating such content as it demoralises people with dark skin and spreads nothing but hatred.
