A look at TikTok's emerging meme culture, as multi-platform meme brands and independent Instagram meme influencers begin investing heavily in the platform
Taylor Lorenz / New York Times : Tweets: @taylorlorenz , @sameer_singh17 , @taylorlorenz , @taylorlorenz , @taylorlorenz , @taylorlorenz , @taylorlorenz , @kattenbarge , and @cowbellytv Tweets: Taylor Lorenz / @taylorlorenz : There is a point in every social media platform's life when it is forced to grapple with the community of memers bending the limits of the platform to go viral. Now, the community is flooding to TikTok, which is (so far) embracing them. https://www.nytimes.com/... Sameer Singh / @sameer_singh17 : Two important takeaways: 1) Memes are identity agnostic, and not something that will encourage stickiness, 2) “Multi-platform meme brands” multi-tenant across a bunch of networks by definition, and are not a source of defensibility. https://twitter.com/... Taylor Lorenz / @taylorlorenz : Large multi-platform meme brands like Daquan, Betch, Memezar, Pubity, and more have shifted their focus on TikTok and are growing by millions https://www.nytimes.com/... Taylor Lorenz / @taylorlorenz : Since launching in the U.S. in 2018, TikTok has cemented itself in meme culture, now the memers are coming to stake their claim on the app. https://www.nytimes.com/... Taylor Lorenz / @taylorlorenz : Mid level meme pages, especially in gaming, are abandoning Instagram to rebuild their meme pages on TikTok. And, a whole new class of Gen Z teens are turning to TikTok to build meme brands of their own from the ground up https://www.nytimes.com/... Taylor Lorenz / @taylorlorenz : “I can't overstate just how much TikTok has taken hold in the meme space. A lot of people associate TikTok with Charli D'Amelio and these dance trends. It's actually a platform where all kinds of viral content can proliferate and thrive.” ~@doncald https://www.nytimes.com/... Taylor Lorenz / @taylorlorenz : “The amount of growth you get on TikTok from one viral video is so much compared to other platforms, it compels more people to start these meme accounts,” said Samir Mezrahi, founder of @KaleSalad. https://www.nytimes.com/... Kat Tenbarge / @kattenbarge : .@TaylorLorenz is one of the few people to report on memes and their makers like what they are - an often “scrappy,” sometimes “dubious,” but absolutely booming business. https://www.nytimes.com/... Cowbelly / @cowbellytv : I spoke with @TaylorLorenz about the emerging meme culture on TikTok. https://www.nytimes.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Instagram spent 2018-2019 as meme culture's distribution layer — screenshots of tweets going viral as image-first Instagram memes — before the platform's meme account purges and belated partnerships-manager hire signaled it was managing, not courting, that community.
TikTok, meanwhile, spent 2019 canonizing its own meme culture in an official year-end list while its users already functioned as informal talent scouts and publicists for new artists — the same repurposing pipeline that had fed curated YouTube channels and Instagram meme accounts. The meme brands' pivot to TikTok is that supply chain relocating.
First-order effects
- Multi-platform meme brands like Daquan, Betch, Memezar, and Pubity are shifting focus to TikTok and growing by millions, while mid-level gaming meme pages abandon Instagram entirely to rebuild on TikTok.
- A new class of Gen Z teens is building meme brands from the ground up on TikTok, bypassing the Instagram follower-accumulation phase entirely.
Second-order effects
- Instagram, having purged 142 meme accounts in July 2019 and only then hired a meme-focused partnerships manager, now faces its meme supply migrating to a rival — its moderation posture becomes a competitive liability.
- TikTok gains a ready-made meme distribution layer without paying for it, repeating the pattern where its users already performed record-label functions like talent scouting and publicity for free.
Third-order effects
- If the migration holds, platform power shifts from whoever hosts the content to whoever hosts the meme-making community — and Instagram's purge-first, court-second playbook shows how moderation choices can hand that community to a competitor.
- The meme economy consolidates around platforms that embrace memers during their growth phase, making meme-community retention a leading indicator of which platforms Gen Z treats as cultural infrastructure.
The trend: Meme culture is becoming the migration force that determines which social platforms win Gen Z attention, with creators and meme brands relocating en masse from Instagram to TikTok.