Everything around us is social media-fying. Virtually every type of company or organization has to think about social media and create strategies for using it, from movie theaters to building manufacturers. In this type of climate engagement is everything, and in order for engagement to be achieved quantity is just as important as quality. 

Yesterday’s fear was centered on what constant posting would do to the young people who were doing the posting, but now we’re in a world where everyone is posting and everything is a post. The fear now is tuned to what might be lost when posting happens for posting’s sake. What happens when every expression or promotion or message becomes nothing but the dirtiest of all words: content? If a social media strategy works, it keeps pulling attention along in ways that are sometimes only vaguely related to the place it’s being pulled to. It doesn’t always matter where you’re headed; you’re here and that’s what’s important. 

It’s this whole mess that makes a band like Radiohead joining TikTok more interesting to me than it probably should be. 

Radiohead joined TikTok about a month ago and in that time have posted about 10 videos, all of which feature a character named Cheiftan Mews. The character dates back to a web series the band did around the release of their fifth studio album in 2003 and gets brought back every so often for the band’s promotional material. 

The online Radiohead fandom has rallied around these short videos in the belief that they are leading up to a release of some sort. Much effort has been spent considering every detail of every video, as if there’s a code that, if cracked, would reveal hidden secrets. Radiohead fans have to believe this all means something. 

Perhaps this is because Cheiftan Mews is typically a tool for promotion in the world of Radiohead, but I think it has more to do with how social media is inseparable from marketing now. When engagement is the best metric, social media strategies are meant to string us along. We’re meant to have a desire to know what’s next and a belief that there is truly something at the end of the rainbow. Like a Russian doll, the belief that there’s something else underneath is more powerful than the thing itself. 

Who knows—maybe Radiohead’s TikToks will lead somewhere, but I tend to think of them as little nuggets of branded weirdness, like a digital, moving-picture poster or T-shirt and not as an elaborate puzzle. Why should digital merchandise mean anything more than physical merchandise?

But I’d be lying if I said that everytime a new video was released, my mind didn’t race to why they chose the particular song that they did or why Cheiftan Mews said what he did. I know a TikTok is probably just a TikTok, but I want to believe that it could be more. 

It doesn’t matter where it’s headed; I’m here and that’s what’s important.

Jordan Petersen Kamp

Jordan Petersen Kamp graduated in 2017. He works as the controller for Trellis, a certified Herman Miller furniture dealer located in West Michigan. In his spare time he enjoys talking about the books and albums he looks forward to reading and listening to someday—the ones that he’s definitely heard of but not heard or read yet.