Homesick! The Tik-Tokification of Culture and Other Modern Casualties

“Homesick”... If you’ve spent any significant amount of time in NYC within the past year, you might have seen this statement plastered on a wall somewhere in some variation or another. You never see it the same way twice. The artist seems to have started in Brooklyn and is slowly popping up in places like the Lower East Side with this mysterious, albeit timely, declaration. What are they saying? Why now? That I don’t know. However, I do know that for me these works speak to a phenomenon that I had noticed upon returning to NYC three years after the tumultuous fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The city I had known in my teenage years was very different. I had changed, of course, but so had the streets I once knew. The culture and the energy behind them had begun to take on this tinted lens colored by stories of displacement, a thickening political atmosphere, and this feeling that things had changed for good. This, coupled with my own transformation from a city-boy to a hike-loving, farm-market going, country boy who was from the city, had me feelin’ like a homesick alien in my own home. But what changed wasn’t just the city — it was the people. The pandemic and the political uncertainty that came with it also brought this accelerated exodus of people moving in and out of the city. The result was that as NYC lost many of its longstanding natives, new residents from other cities arrived to take their place. These new residents are colloquially known as transplants.

The topic of transplants in the context of urban society has firmly established itself in the cultural zeitgeist in recent years, most notably, as it relates to urban centers such as NYC and the like. The term transplant rolls off the tongue like a dirty epithet, a classification of us vs. them, the invaded vs. the invaders. But what does the term actually mean and why is it important? Walk with me as I explore my thoughts and perspectives on this phenomenon as an NYC native.

For the sake of agreeing on terms I want to start by calling attention to what is meant by the word transplant. By definition, to transplant is to move or transfer (something) to another place or situation, typically with some effort or upheaval. That last part – “typically with some effort or upheaval”– might be key to shedding light on the charged nature of the term as it relates to its use within the current cultural sphere. So, in a broad sense, while a transplant is technically anyone who moves from their native city or place of origin to somewhere new, there is an underlying connotation with the term in this contemporary context that is very modern and reason for its charged nature.

People have been moving about for millennia – of course, nothing wrong with that. But what makes the term transplant strike a chord now and why the term itself has such a modern connotation is the unique concoction of socio-cultural circumstances and historical awareness that have come to their peak in our current, Jetsonian age. We’ll get more into this later.

So, while technically a transplant is anyone who relocates from their home of origin to live somewhere else, what we’re actually talking about here is something a bit less benign. Nobody is mad at the Jamaican family who made their way to a big city in the states for more opportunity or even the Ohio native who relocated to NYC to expand their reach as a DJ. Big cities like New York are a product of diverse populations of people coming together from their respective places of origin. But these cities flower their unique character through the diffusion and symbiosis of culture, not by its extraction, exportation and imposition, which is the brand of transplant that folks are actually up in arms about today.

The transplants that folks are concerned with are the ones who blatantly disregard and remain willfully oblivious to the etiquette and customs of the new environment in which they now occupy. It is this lack of respect or engagement with culture that is a contributing factor in why cities are becoming husks of what they once were in the opinions of many natives and even some transplants themselves.

One of the more notable factors exacerbating and magnifying this issue is mass media. We live in an age characterized by digital influence and mass access. All is surveilled, immortalized and replicated for consumption. Social media now functions as

an apparatus of social identification whereby persona and class are crystallized by search engines, algorithms and now, artificial intelligence. As such, this influx of non-natives is playing out right before our eyes more intimately visible than ever before. Not only is it visible to us but it is increasingly visible and quantifiable to the forces of capitalism and corporate interest.

The product? Just that – a product. Entire neighborhoods become objects of capitalistic consumption and thus must be terraformed and packaged to then be marketed effectively. Nuance becomes excess complication that must be trimmed away. Hegemony and uniformity is most profitable. The native inhabitants must be increasingly policed to conform to the ideals of the new demographic of privileged would-be occupants being ushered in. Noise complaints skyrocket. The neighborhood must be made in the image of what these consumers want and/or expect. And what is it that these consumers want and/or expect? Some cross between Sex and the City, F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and How I Met Your Mother.

As a result, walking down the street in any gentrified neighborhood you begin to find models of the hegemonic ideal as deemed by the social media forces that be. You will spot them by the very fact that there are multiple of them. They have an interestingly similar way of dressing as if by some uniform mandate. There is a way of speaking — this sort of nondescript, nasally pitch that seems to defy all manner of nuance or distinction. Overall this brand of new-comer is characterized by a stripping down to the bare minimum of individual expression to omit any possibility of offense or obtuseness. This minimalism is not the result of a lack of consideration for how one presents themselves or tied to any deeper philosophy necessarily. It is, in fact, often the opposite — a curated attempt at belonging to a particular social class or scene. This pruning is also necessary to allow the landscape in which they now occupy to become part of their dress, an essential addition to their wardrobes and personas, ready for stories and feeds.

This heavily curated uniform and persona functions as a signifier for class and status which pre-sorts those who are in and those who are out. It is a thought-form of what a particular archetype should look like as someone who lives in a certain place, of a certain class, with a certain level of access and privilege. These personas are less a product of experience and more a product of good marketing, targeted advertising and an optimized feed.

Eventually places like NYC become caricatures of what they once were — simulacre, even — a copy of a copy in which the original can no longer be found. Except the original still exists, just not in search engines. Rather, it exists within the inherited lived experiences of those who reside and have rooted themselves within these places, reaching a state of symbiosis. As such, transplants – specifically those who opt to terraform their image via a culture of consumerism in order to fit an idea of a place rather than the actuality of a place – slowly degrade and distort the character of said environment, creating this eerie disconnect in those who witness it all play out.

A key factor in this trend toward hegemony is digital exportation of culture. The transplants that urbanites are complaining about aren’t the ones who immerse themselves in and contribute to the culture of the area with humility and curiosity. They are the ones who are less interested in what can be added or contributed, but rather what can be claimed, extracted and exported for profit. This exportation — for profit in the form of clout, status and even monetary reward — requires little to no real engagement or investment in the people and communities that are being used as backdrops for the content. And what follows their influence is an influx of conformers that represent an antithesis to diversity and authenticity. Yet, it is not their presence alone that is the issue necessarily – to each their own – but rather, the deeper, more systemic issues that they represent.

The transplants I am referring to here are symptoms of the capitalistic and imperialistic condition in that these are the very forces that compel these newcomers to occupy these environments and export a narrative of these spaces through their own lens. This has manifested as what I call the Tik-Tokificiation of big cities. Instead of choosing cities based on cultural resonance, cities must be chosen based on the influence of status and capital. These outsiders (outsiders because of their intentions or lack thereof with regard to moving here) through their newfound status in being able to live in these desirable and romanticized areas, become the mouthpieces that other outsiders are able to consume and live vicariously through. Cultural context is stripped away as folks can remotely consume content about a place via minute-long clips sharing an “underrated gem of a restaurant in the heart of *insert trendy urban neighborhood here*”. To their audiences these influencers are the authority as to what a place is like.

This Tik-Tokification can lead to all kinds of inflation and distortion. For example, as a result of the effects of virality, an otherwise localized establishment might now begin to cater to a demographic that has different expectations than that which they are accustomed to serving. The people who live in the surrounding area are suddenly limited in their access to the space by way of this algorithm-driven spike in traffic from non-local visitors. Prices increase, demographics change, culture shifts and becomes diluted.

Now, I do recognize there is nuance here — I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t enjoy the occasional social media restaurant recommendation. But it does call to mind how these phenomena contribute to realities such as gentrification and cultural displacement. For instance, what impact does this influx of non-natives have on the way that these businesses now conduct their operations as far as who they begin to cater to and what voices get prioritized by the mandates of capital? If more and more spaces are compelled to be curated to this one hegemonic ideal – usually that of minimalism and “universality” or some surface-level bohemian aesthetic – what spaces are left where people can truly be themselves and engage in the alchemical process that creates rich urban environments?

So how do we achieve true authenticity in a world built around marketing and fabrication? How do we return to true expression? Maybe that begins with a return to real, in-person engagement. That requires a resistance to the pervasiveness of surveillance and an exploration of alternative ways of connecting beyond social media. Our predecessors understood this. Legendary cultural spaces like The Loft and Sound Factory during the burgeoning of the House and Disco movements in NYC during the 70s and onward were spaces that were dedicated to free and safe self-expression. These spaces were protected and held as sacred whereby what happened there was not for the eyes of those who were not a part of that community. Cameras were forbidden and there were house rules that valued mutual respect and equality amongst the community. It is important that we find ways to engage again in the celebration and participation in culture rather than simply the witnessing and consuming of it.

How can we create spaces in which people don’t have to be surveilled? Spaces that are sacred and treated as such? Spaces that connect us to a sense of community that is rooted in true knowledge and respect for ourselves and one another – the very essence of what birthed these cultures we so enjoy? It is possible.

I think people are beginning to get this sense that something is missing in our cities. People are rejecting this sanitization that is happening in which things seem to be more and more curated and branded to the point where so much feels commercial, microwaved ‘til luke-warm and far from true expressions of human soul. I sense a collective desire to release performance and pretense in favor of something more present, more honest, more real. The transplant conversation is an assertion of the value of authenticity. My view is that despite attempts to suppress it and make things more palatable to the masses, authenticity will always prevail.