Abstract
TikTok, one of the world's most popular social media platforms, continues to expand its market and user base in Turkey. While the platform has become a strategic outlet for individuals to gain visibility in Turkey, its content has evoked positive and negative feelings in users and non-users. The latter deliberately refuse to use TikTok because of its alleged association with lower classes and voice precisely the feelings of shame and disgust toward the platform and its users. TikTok users choose the platform over "others" for its capacity to foster intimacy. However, they still have concerns about their use of TikTok, such as worries over privacy and feelings of fatigue and boredom induced by the coronavirus pandemic. Through an analysis of the social media practices of TikTok content producers, audiences, and its cynics, the project aims to address the emotional framework of the social media experiences against the backdrop of an authoritarian Turkey divided along binaries of us and them, western and local, urban and rural, secular and pious, binaries which have also come to shape the country's social media practices. While the polarization of the social media landscape has generated social media fatigue and boredom in individuals, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has intensified such feelings due to the increased use of social media of individuals who oscillate between uncertainty and hope, waiting for the COVID-19 pandemic to end.
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