The first-person shooter series Call of Duty is one of the most successful game franchises of all time. Call of Duty has also long been understood as a vestige of traditional masculinity in game culture and symbolic of male dominance in games. With its military context and antagonistic design, it is a “perfect ‘proving ground’ for hegemonizing performances of masculinity”. However, this interpretation has been challenged following the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II in November 2022 when one of the game’s main characters became the centerpiece of women and queer driven fandom om TikTok. In a matter of days, a new fandom had been established and Kotaku reported that the space had “been invaded by thirsty TikTokers who are going absolutely feral for Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley”. 

Using digital ethnography, the project follows the fandom of the character “Ghost” from the first person shooter game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, and how the fans collectively combines in-game footage, established fan practices and creative zest to remake the game to their own desires. The women and queer facing community provide a playful and creative space to express sexual fantasies to elicit lust and emotional connection with other fans, combining memetic logics with innovative use of both fictional narratives and audiovisual technology.  

The project investigates a) how emotion (specifically sexual desire) is mediated and circulated on TikTok, b) how the material affordances of the platform are shaping creativity and community online, and c) how TikTok is changing, and continuing, established fan practices and - expressions. Together this inquiry will give insights in two key areas. 

1)    Increased understanding of what makes TikTok different (and similar) to other platforms, with particular focus on how multimodal storytelling and memetic participation is used to create specific emotional responses in the audience. Considering the popularity of the platform, and how central it is to younger users, it is still largely understudied, and much work is needed to make sense of how the platform is changing what “social media” is – as well as what it signifies to “be online”. 

2)    Documentation and knowledge about the way women and queer folk on TikTok are expressing sexual desire online, contributing to our understanding of how sexuality on the internet is performed – and, importantly, how “sex online” it is not limited to pornography/porn industries. That there exist other narratives, aesthetics, communities, and practices related to sex online, and that are challenging both heteronormative and sexist depiction of sexual desire. Mapping and analyzing these fan practices and -expressions is also a way to document and give legitimacy to these practices, which despite their pervasiveness, are considered sub-cultural.  

Research questions

The main research question for the project is: How do users on TikTok negotiate platform affordances in the collective creation of emotionally and sexually charged content, and to what effects? 
To address this question, several sub questions will be explored: 

•    How is TikTok shaping creativity and community? 

•    How are emotions mediated, shared and sustained through TikTok? 

•    How are fandom practices changing, and continued, on TikTok? 

•    How are memetic participation shaping use on TikTok, and how is memetic participation changed by TikTok?