Abstract
TikTok has seen a staggering growth and relevance in the social media space since its release in 2018, becoming a staple of social media in the short time it has been around. In the last ten years or so, an entire industry centered around content creators has developed for an ever-expanding audience, and these influencers and content creators can occupy a wide variety of genres for any kind of viewer. Among these different developing categories of influencers, I have found Psychedelic influencers, which have gained a foothold on TikTok creating content discussing the safe usage, and benefits, of taking psychedelics. This thesis tries to understand the positions of Psychedelic influencers, not only as psychedelic users operating in a space that doesn’t seem to want them, but also as activist influencers, and content creators more generally, that are working in a new form of global communication. I explore how this activist content creation is started on social media and its larger relation to activism and discourse outside of the digital space. I argue that influencers and content creators build a certain type of “entertainer authority” in asserting themselves in the quadrilateral power dynamic that exists within this blending digital and economic space, cultivating and using credibility as a form of capital to better coax their followers into supporting them. This thesis draws on digital fieldwork on TikTok and interviews with psychedelic influencers, as well as developing new strategies for bringing anthropological methodologies to the social media space. Content creation is not only a space where activists can contribute to important ideological dialogues, but it may also be a space anthropologists can contribute to the public understanding of the discipline.