This article investigates the characteristics and communicative values of the popular PoV meme on TikTok to uncover mechanisms of community building on the platform. An analysis of the content, form, and stance of 250 videos revealed that creators of PoV memes lip-sync to audio remediated from pop culture and mimic how they imagine “you” would act in a given scenario. I offer the concept of “echoic affiliation” to describe how PoV memes leverage TikTok’s “use this sound” function to construct ephemeral bonds between users. Furthermore, PoV memes textually articulate multiple perspectives, producing intersubjective encounters that reflect a platform imaginary in which “the algorithm” efficiently clusters similar people on the same “side” of the app. In the conclusions, I present a novel definition of PoV memes and reflect on the pivotal role of affiliation for TikTok’s platform vernacular.

中文翻译：

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“PoV：你正在阅读一篇学术文章。”隶属关系在 TikTok 平台白话中的模因表现


本文研究了 TikTok 上流行的 PoV 模因的特点和传播价值，以揭示平台上社区建设的机制。对 250 个视频的内容、形式和立场的分析表明，PoV 模因的创作者对口型与从流行文化中修复的音频同步，并模仿他们想象中的“你”在特定场景中的行为。我提供了 “echoic affiliation” 的概念来描述 PoV 模因如何利用 TikTok 的 “use this sound” 功能在用户之间构建短暂的纽带。此外，PoV 模因在文本上表达了多种观点，产生了主体间的相遇，反映了一个虚构的平台，其中“算法”有效地将相似的人聚集在应用程序的同一“一侧”。在结论中，我提出了 PoV 模因的新定义，并反思了隶属关系对 TikTok 平台白话的关键作用。