ANTI-TIKTOK COLLOQUIUM: Stagings of Surveillance and TikTok Trance in the Techno-Feudal Regime of the Gaze

Our next live podcast focuses on aestheticizing surveillance on TikTok. Surveillance infrastructures are central tools of authoritarian and techno-feudal rule, where a few major corporations have control over data, visibility and access. This logic extends to the TikTok feed with the algorithm itself being part of a surveillance architecture that tracks, categorizes, and evaluates. We ask why the commodification of surveillance – as in the case of Kylie Jenner promoting Meta glasses – so often occurs through women, and we look at how locked-in phases and dopamine detox are being staged.