When TikTok Discovered the Human Remains Trade: A Case Study

Abstract

In the summer of 2021, a video on TikTok was heavily reposted across a variety of social media platforms (attracting conventional media attention too). Unusually (for TikTok), it was about the trade in human remains. Thus, we were presented with the opportunity to watch how knowledge of the trade exploded into broader public consciousness on a comparatively newer platform. In this article, we scrape TikTok for reactions to that moment. In our previous research on the human remains trade on Instagram, we used a particular suite of digital humanities methods to understand how Instagram was being used by participants in the trade. Here, we employ those same methods to develop a case study for contrast. The original individual, whose TikTok account is used to promote his bricks-and-mortar business buying and selling human remains, has, as a result of this attention, gained an even greater number of followers and views, making the video a “success.” Nevertheless, several users engaged in long discussions in the comments concerning the ethics of what this individual is doing. A number of users created videos to criticize his activities, discussing the moral, ethical, and legal issues surrounding the trade in human remains, which in many ways makes the “success” of this video one of fostering opposition and a wider understanding of the ethical and moral issues around this trade.

Keywords

• human remains
• social media
• network analysis
• computer vision