Revenge of the “Childless Cat Ladies”
TikTokers (and their cats) skewer JD Vance over his past controversial comments
This week, TikTok officially has a new main character, and his name is JD Vance.
As the dust settles on Vice President Kamala Harris becoming the Democratic nominee, attention has turned to Donald Trump’s running mate… and some of his weirder quotes and general beliefs about the world.
In the past 7 days, the TikTok conversation around Vance has been overwhelmingly negative. According to social analytics platform Zelf, 76% of the top-performing posts mentioning Vance on the platform have been negative, while just 18% were positive.
The most-viewed video mentioning the unpopular VP candidate is this funky remix of Vance’s infamous line stating that he is “a Never Trump Guy.” It’s received 2.8 million views. There are also A LOT of hot takes on Vance’s (false, but internet famous) affinity for couches. Here are a few to check out, if you’re looking for some sometimes NSFW cushion humor.
But the couch jokes have nothing on the ire of the “childless cat ladies.”
For context, way back in 2021, Vance claimed that the U.S. was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too." That quote reemerged this week and the “childless cat ladies” had some thoughts. Dozens of cat owners took to TikTok to share reaction videos of their cats listening to Vance’s offensive remarks.
Here are just a few videos of cats not impressed with Vance, which have received almost 4 million views and over 631K likes. We also saw bangers like this one:
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As they say, if you’re coming for the childless cat ladies, you best not miss. Vance is learning that the hard way.
Top posts: Kamala Harris
According to social analytics platform Zelf, there were 62,400 posts mentioning Harris on TikTok last week, receiving a collective 1 billion views.
9.2% of the top-performing TikTok posts last week mentioning Harris were negative, 1.64% were neutral, and 89.16% were positive. These were the top ten most-viewed:
Team Harris had some big wins this week. Footage of Harris from an Atlanta rally went viral, especially when, speaking directly to Donald Trump she said, “If you have something to say, say it to my face.” That video from @kamalahq received 6.3 million views and over 1.2 million likes. Just on her own feed, content from her Atlanta rally, which included cameos from Quavo and Megan Thee Stallion, got over 18.7 million views and over 3.865 million likes.
The top video mentioning Harris this week was a viral news clip shared by @anaveragedad. It showed footage of Harris dropping out of the race in 2019. The post has been taken down and the account has been deleted, presumably because it confused users into thinking that she’s currently dropping out of the race.
The other most viewed Harris video on TikTok this week came from @thedailymail sharing her first presidential campaign video (featuring Beyoncé’s Freedom). It received 12.7 million views and over 2.3 million likes.
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And if you’re looking for some fire content, check out this video of Donald Trump mocking Kamala Harris about opting for the prosecutor over the convicted felon and then Harris chiming in “I approve this message.”
Top posts: Donald Trump
According to social analytics platform Zelf, there were 83,700 posts mentioning Trump on TikTok last week, receiving a collective 1.2 billion views.
68.83% of the top-performing TikTok posts last week mentioning Trump were negative, 0.93% were neutral, and 30.24% were positive. These were the top ten most-liked:
According to Zelf, most of the top posts about Trump were actually Harris hits against him. Though @WalterMasterson (more on him below) did make the week’s list with this video attacking Trump’s proposed tax policies.
The most-viewed video mentioning Trump came from @rap, which shared this video of Trump greeted by cheering crowds while “Many Men” by 50 Cent blares in the background. It has received over 20 million views.
On the issues…
Out of 15 major political issues that we’re tracking each week with the help of Zelf’s tracking tools, the political topic receiving the most engagement last week was Women’s Rights/Abortion Access.
Note: For purposes of this newsletter, “Top-Performing Posts” can be defined as any posts that TikTok displays in its search functionality. Many posts that receive very few views are not distributed widely and are excluded from search.
Some top posts on the topic were this remix of then-Senator Harris questioning Brett Kavanaugh about whether or not there are laws that give the government power to make decisions about the male body, and this video of Megan Thee Stallion at a Harris rally declaring that “If you want to keep loving your body you know who to vote for.” Another came from @thegoodliars, with a man-on-the-street style interview debunking anti-abortion misinformation.
The next most popular issue was the candidates’ fitness to serve.
From the campaign trail…
Here’s how many total views each campaign’s videos have received since the start of the campaign:
The Harris campaign now has two TikTok accounts! They still have @KamalaHQ, but now they also have @KamalaHarris, which launched late last week. We’ll be sharing data from both accounts to get a better understanding of their collective impact.
This week, her combined accounts gained 388.4 million new views and posted 36 videos. Their top performing video this past week was with @LanceBass saying “Bye Bye Bye” to Donald Trump in November. It garnered 41.6m views and 3.6 million likes.
In short order, the Harris campaign’s accounts have reached parity with Trump’s 500 million views on his content.
Over on Team Trump, they gained 139 million new views this past week and posted three new videos this week.
Two of those videos feature Donald Trump with YouTube/UFC influencer Jake Paul. You can watch them here and here. That second video is the two of them calling Harris stupid.
His third video, which received significantly more views than the other two, is silent, with a note that says “This sound isn’t available.” Presumably, they used some copyrighted music that got pulled from the platform, though that’s just an educated guess. Sound or not, it didn’t stop 1.5 million people from smashing that like button on this supercut of Trump dancing, getting off a plane or declaring “Kamala you’re fired.” (From what exactly isn’t clear, since she’s the nominee, not the incumbent. But maybe it made more sense with the intended audio).
Creator Spotlight: @WalterMasterson
Ever see a guy on TikTok eating – extravagantly – while making a simple, but cutting, remark about a story in the news? Then you might have seen content from today’s creator spotlight @WalterMasterson.
Walter has a bit, and he repeats the bit constantly. But he does it well. And he’s gained over 2 million followers and gotten just shy of 100 million likes playing out said bit.
So here’s the deal—he’s trim, well-kempt, and nicely dressed. He’s almost always preparing to eat food in an elaborate and over-the-top way.
Here’s an example where he’s sitting at a nice restaurant, pouring dressing onto his salad, and decrying, “so Republicans want to ban IVF and then shame women for not having kids.” He then takes a bite, nods his head, laughs with his eyes and declares, “got it!”
That’s the bit. But his numbers are massive. That specific video referenced above got 6.4 million views and 723,900 likes. This video about an INCEL dating app that can’t get women to join has 7.9 million views and 1.1 million likes. And here’s one about the Trump shooting with 24.2 million views and 3.5 million likes.
His bio on TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram reads simply "Comedian" (quotes his). He also posts videos of himself trolling school boards, showing up at events, etc. But it’s the shit-eating posts that really seem to be breaking through the algorithm.
News & platform updates
Democrats have finally learned the value of sh*tposting, according to WIRED’s Makena Kelly
The Washington Post took a look at “The Online Army Supercharging Harris’ campaign.”
Mass food poisoning hit the TikTok team at their office in Singapore. Hope everyone’s okay!
Last week we reported that TikTok seemed to be trying to radicalize young Germans. This week, it’s been reported that TikTok has a Nazi problem right here at home.
While Donald Trump might be wracking up huge numbers on TikTok, Republicans aren’t joining him on the platform.
That’s it for this week. We’ll be back in your inboxes next Thursday with more charts, data, and insights. If you enjoyed today’s newsletter, would you mind forwarding it to a colleague or sharing it on Twitter or Threads?
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The #FYP newsletter is a product of FWIW and produced by Josh Klemons, Kyle Tharp, and Lucy Ritzmann. Most data included in this newsletter is provided by Zelf, an AI-powered social analytics platform.