“Why do Indians cry passionately on Insta?”: Grief performativity and ecologies of commerce of crying videos

Abstract

The article attempts to explore the specific performative and digital practice of users sharing digital self-images and videos on social media platforms in which they cry, with or without a ‘tear filter’. In this article, the author employs Netnography (Kozinets, 2010) to look at social media accounts and online archives to track the origins of the trend of ‘crying videos on TikTok’ and through comments, reactions, and user interactions, attempts to understand how grief is performed on Instagram and TikTok. The article offers a diversion from the ossification of the current scholarship on self-images and identity construction on social media by looking at the marketability and entanglements in ecologies of commerce and sociality that the crying videos lead to.