On losing the “dispensable” sense: TikTok imitation publics and COVID-19 smell loss challenges

Abstract

The enduring effects of COVID-19 have called into question many of the assumptions upon which media and cultural studies rest, including a fundamental mode of perception: the sense of smell. In dialog with the field of sensory studies, this paper traces digital smell loss (anosmia) communities from pre-pandemic Facebook groups to mid-pandemic TikTok challenges. This article considers digital smell loss communities on TikTok as imitation publics characterized by repetition. Via replicable TikTok challenges, digital smell-loss communities reckoned with the unmooring effects of a seemingly mild symptom. By exploring how formulaic smell-loss challenges generated support and facilitated community-building, this article demands greater attention to a sense often considered ‘disposable’.

A video of an orange over a gas stove emerges on your ‘For You’ page. You are scrolling through TikTok, an increasingly popular – and maligned – social media platform, on which the video is enthusiastically captioned ‘How to get taste buds back!!!’ You are not surprised to see content related to COVID-19 on your page, since it appears as just one of many videos related to the ongoing pandemic on an app considered at once a lockdown ‘leviathan’, ‘fever dream’, and a possible instrument for public health communication (Kale, 2020). You hear the disembodied voice of @toosmxll, the online alias of then 23-year-old Kemar Lalor (Rao, 2021), claiming that ‘If you’ve lost your taste buds I’m going to show you guys how to get them back real quick’ (@toosmxll, 2020). The video transports you, the viewer, to an unknown kitchen where, without knowing its location in time and space you are instructed to burn, peel, and eat the orange with brown sugar.

The burnt orange, proposed as a ‘cure’ for COVID-19 anosmia – the condition of having lost one’s sense of smell – is just one of many quick-fix solutions that appeared on the video sharing app from May 2020 to April 2021; however, the charred fruit comes from Lalor’s grandmother as a cold remedy, and, like the many other anosmia treatments suggested across social media networks, is scientifically unfounded (Rao, 2021). Though the efficacy of these smell-loss treatments is suspect, their prevalence is significant: as of April 2021, the hashtag #covidtastetest had 28.1 million instances of use, while #covidsmelltest had over four million, and #smelltok, a hashtag that marks a general interest in smell, had 1.4 million. Even though these metrics indicate an interest (however fleeting) in smell and smell loss, they only scratch the surface of the vibrant and heterogenous sub-communities, challenges, and micro-trends on TikTok. The following paper discusses some of the ways smell loss was taken up during a particular temporal period on TikTok. This discussion moves between digital anosmia communities more broadly to the unique publics formed on TikTok, the latter of which I argue are characterized by reproduction or what Zulli and Zulli (2022) term ‘imitation publics’. Like the burnt orange video that instructs ‘you’ to try out the remedy, other videos on the aptly named ‘For You’ page call you into a collective, if only you try out the trend for yourself.

Smell may seem an unlikely sense for TikTok or any social media app. Scents obviously cannot be communicated by bytes and may even exceed the bounds of discursive communication (Yong, 2015), remaining in the realm of the somatic and sensuous. Or it may seem unlikely for another reason: the general presumption that smell is an unnecessary mode of perception. Although earlier periods of Western philosophy tended to relegate smell to the sensory periphery – Kant deemed it the ‘most dispensable’ of the senses (Keller, 2016) – smell’s marginal position has since been disputed, especially in the field of sensory studies. Researchers like Classen et al. (1994) have sought to recuperate olfaction, arguing that ‘odours are invested with cultural values and employed by societies as a means of and model for defining and interacting with the world’. Smelling is an individual and embodied experience and as such does present some barriers to communication; however, media studies and sense studies have come together to discuss the creative ways that digital communities navigate somatic experiences, making smell another juncture at which we can consider how both odors and media are culturally produced. Following existing interventions into the history and culture of smell, I seek to further explore how smell appears in digital communities through experiences of its loss. While TikTok and COVID-19 have garnered public interest, this paper’s attention to anosmia and imitation introduces new – and currently unstudied – considerations for a recent but elapsed moment in digital culture. ¹ Learning from this bygone moment in an ever-changing digital-cultural milieu is perhaps part of how we make sense of a global pandemic and its afterlives (digital or otherwise). After all, COVID-19 has, for many, ruptured that which was previously taken for granted – including the fundamental experience of smell.

To those with anosmia, parosmia, or phantosmia, smell is certainly not dispensable. Though anosmia is a relatively common condition, many that lost their smell for the first time due to COVID-19 described it as ‘discombobulate[ing]’ and ‘lonel[y]’ experience (Rabin, 2021). One person described their condition as ‘creepy’ (Jarvis, 2021) while others say that it affected their quality of life (Rabin, 2021). Some even found that if they did recover their ability to smell it returned disjointed or ‘broken,’ a condition called parosmia in which scents are perceived incorrectly. For example, food might smell like gasoline, or, if afflicted with phantosmia, one might smell gasoline where there is none (Jarvis, 2021). Unmoored by smell loss, many COVID-19 anosmiacs took to social media to express alarm at their new relationship to perception. As some shared their experiences through traditional social media forums like Facebook support groups, others turned to the newer, micro-video platform TikTok. Since TikTok algorithmically promotes replicable content – often through repeated sounds, movements, dances, ‘challenges’, or trends – communities developed via multi-modal texts which transgress the limits of a seemingly indescribable phenomenon.

Zulli and Zulli (2022) take up ‘how techno-social configurations continue to influence sociality’ on TikTok through what they term ‘imitation publics’. Building on ‘networked publics’ (Boyd, 2010; Ito, 2008), the authors define imitation publics as ‘a collection of people whose digital connectivity is constituted through the shared ritual of content imitation and replication’ (Zulli and Zulli, 2022). Though networked publics account for the ways in which technology structures interactions and cultivates ‘imagined collectives’ (Boyd, 2010), the term ‘imitation publics’ is useful because it emphasizes repetition as the central mode of engagement. Unlike other apps, TikTok does not center friends lists or personal networks (e.g. Instagram or Facebook); instead, users are directed toward the public ‘For You’ page. The exceedingly public nature of TikTok encourages replication, wherein creators not only copy the videos of others, but want their own videos to be similarly recreated. As just one example, Zulli and Zulli point to videos by Vietnamese health officials who created a dance ‘challenge’ to demonstrate proper hand washing techniques, which became a trend once replicated by other creators. In digital challenges such as this, the demand for repetition is made explicit: the viewer is called to act, repeat the behavior they witness, and as a result, participate as a legible subject within a dialog or community.

‘It seemed too good to be true. . .’, says TikTok user @hildsymarie (2021), as she stands with a hand on her chest and a finger against her forehead. The short video captures another person standing behind @hildsymarie (2021) who is instructed to flick the back of the TikToker’s head. “Basically, you push between your eyes and then touch your tongue while someone flicks you,” says @hildsymarie (2021), who then tests to see if her smell and taste have returned. The purportedly chiropractic technique is “an answered prayer” for the TikToker, who excitedly announces that she can smell and taste again after losing her senses as a symptom of COVID-19: “I’m slowly getting my taste back. Guys everyone needs to know this,” meaning the supposed remedy, which is cited from a segment featuring a certified chiropractor on the local news channel AZ Family (2021). In the original video, the chiropractor claims that by “flick[ing] them on the back of the head” the olfactory nerve can be stimulated to return one’s sense of smell (AZ Family, 2021). However, this is clinically unfounded and lacks the rigorous research necessary for any public health intervention (Axén et al., 2020; Miller, 2021). In short, the chiropractic trick was debunked.

Despite its unscientific claims the short video gained an incredible following. Posted on 28 February 2021, the video received 13.9 million views as of April 2021. TikTok is not necessarily more susceptible to the spread of misinformation than other social media sites but when individual experiences are shared broadly there is always room for misinterpretation. In other words, when personal somatic experiences are the object of discussion, viewers might be unaware of the content’s public health implications. Still, millions of accountholders engaged with the under-a-minute “hack.” Other TikTok creators posted similar videos. The suggested posture and head-flick action repeats in other #smelltok videos, which oscillate in tone – skepticism or optimism in the hack’s efficacy – and in result – positive (regaining smell) or a negative (no change). The repetition of style and performance is central: the videos have divergent outcomes and individual creators do not necessarily belong to a shared community beforehand, so what brings them together into a collective is their participation in the trend itself (made legible by shared tone, action, technical features, etc). Unlike networked publics that form solely through friends lists or comments sections, TikTok publics emerge in large part through the choices taken up by creators, resulting in constellations of connected videos.

Supposed cures for smell loss were not the only challenges to emerge. Challenges also tested whether or to what extent an individual’s smell had been lost in the first place. “So apparently one of the symptoms of COVID-19 is the loss of smell, so today I’m going to be giving the boys a smell test,” says a woman who holds the camera in a selfie position, suggesting that the two teenagers featured in the video are her children, and presumably that she is the account holder (@haueterfamily, 2020). The woman then blindfolds the children and asks them to smell different objects, most considered smelly or even gross. After smelling garlic, pickle juice, and socks, the blindfolded test subjects react with disgusted faces, indicating that they have smelled the objects and found them unpleasant. The caption of the video asks the audience “did you know the loss of smell is a symptom of COVID-19?” followed by hashtags including “#cancelcovidsmellchallenge” (@haueterfamily, 2020).

The short video received millions of views and engagements, demonstrating a public receptive to the #smellchallenge. In another video the call to “cancel covid” appears again, this time alongside a blindfolded young woman who smells objects held by a man offscreen (@ilovefriday, 2020). “An early symptom of coronavirus is loss of smell, otherwise known as anosmia,” says the offscreen narrator, who then holds out coffee, a candle, and a hotdog for the blindfolded subject to sniff (@ilovefriday, 2020). The @haueterfamily (2020) and @ilovefriday (2020) videos are nearly identical in format, narration, captioning, and both even end with the test subject being made to smell something unpleasant, whether that be a smelly sock or meat product. The selected videos are just two of the 11 million videos within the hashtag #CancelCOVIDSmellChallenge but they serve as examples of a prolific trend that depends on reproduction. These creators are just two of the many challenge participants concerned with COVID smell loss, but they demonstrate how mimicry is fundamental to the app.

However novel COVID-19 and TikTok may be, analogous communities pre-date the recent pandemic. Primarily, the Facebook group AbScent is a large digital smell-loss community that began as a page for people with anosmia to share their experiences (Rao). The groups’ founder Chrissi Kelly lost her sense of smell after a sinus infection and described her experience as “unmoor[ing]” (Piñon, 2021). Though Kelly eventually recovered, she said her fluctuating ability to smell led to negative mental health outcomes and that she “didn’t feel like [her]self anymore” (Piñon, 2021). AbScent’s membership grew by tens of thousands as COVID-19 spread, prompting group moderators to make a separate group specifically for COVID-19 anosmia. One member discussed how the condition has impacted their everyday life saying “I can’t do dishes, it makes me gag,” while another expressed that they could “no longer smell and experience the emotions of everyday basic living” (Rabin, 2021). Both testimonies recuperate smell as an important part of daily life, but the latter is especially evocative as it gestures to a connection between the affective and the odoriferous. These digital narratives cohere with previous research that suggests that smell, memory, and emotion share a “uniquely direct neuroanatomical link” (Herz, 2006), like one study from Waskul et al. (2009) on the relationship between memory, nostalgia, and olfaction which argues that smell is part of “embodied identity work.” In other words, olfactory perception is mediated by previous experience and emotions, which in turn inform not only what the person smells but how they see themselves, the world, and their place within it. In this context, subordinating the pleasures and possibilities of olfaction appears misguided as some adults with anosmia feel as if they have been “moved away from reality” (Tafalla, 2014).

The Facebook groups not only provided a supportive community for an often-overlooked loss, but the rapidly increasing posts and testimonies also formed a corpus of early data useful for healthcare researchers trying to understand an unknown and evolving virus. AbScent is just one of many digital health interventions that demonstrates how “patients, care-givers, and healthcare professionals” can form alliances to achieve shared goals and develop new research Zhu et al. (2019). Though different from TikTok imitation publics which I’ve argued largely form through repetition, Abscent posts similarly constitute a cultural archive based on the shared experience of smell loss. Both Abscent and #smelltok communities share some commonalities: members often suggest remedies, describe their feelings, and respond to the concerns of others. Whether via Facebook or TikTok one thing is clear: the loss of smell can be a lonely experience that digital communities can help address.

Now we return to the “burnt orange trend”: a regional cold remedy transformed into a global “life hack.” @tooxmxll’s original video reached upwards of 20 million views and 200 thousand shares. Among the thousands of shares are similarly formatted short videos replicating or testing Lalor’s remedy, in which TikTokers burn, peel, mash, and taste an orange in hopes of reviving their lost senses. “Boys and girls I am no scientist but it does work, I’m telling you. . . It’s going to work I promise you,” says Lalor, and the many response videos or comments reflect a belief in, or at least a willingness to try out, the unlikely promise. One video by @heirdi_louise777 cites Lalour, saying, “We found it on TikTok don’t fail us,” and then goes on to show the mother preparing the burnt orange for her “daughter [who] had corona a few months back” and who “still can’t smell or taste.” The daughter, seated at a kitchen table, tries the charred and mashed orange and quietly shakes her head, “It didn’t work” (@heirdi_louise777). In another video, @jorminezuda (2020) laments “I want my taste back,” accompanied by the hashtags “#covidtastetestchallenge,” linking to a broader corpus of sense challenges. After mashing the orange and adding brown sugar, @jorminezuda (2020)says in a sing-song voice “I taste nothing,” indicating another failed attempt at regaining their taste and smell.

The #burntorange TikTok hashtag features a seemingly endless feed of fruit over a kitchen stove. Each video, though distinct, is situated within a public produced through replication. Situated at the “intersection of people, technology, and practice” (Boyd, 2010), the challenge participants connect to others with shared experiences and gesture to broader conversations about public health communication, community formation, and digital interventions into sensation. As creators appropriate the technologies available to them – both TikTok’s features (editing, sharing, et cetera) and the “hack” instructions posted by Lalor – they are integrated into a cultural archive of COVID-era smell-loss. Although the trends studied here are instances of misinformation, they do indicate that public health information could similarly mobilize the same traits of “live” participation and replicability to activate a mimetic public based on factual public health interventions (Zulli and Zulli, 2022).

Though this paper’s discussion is by no means exhaustive, TikTok challenges demonstrate how creators use a “disjointed,” “discombobulated,” or else disappeared sense of smell in new ways and for different purposes. Whether articulating oneself as part of a community or toying with the limits of bodily sense, the videos implicate reproduction as both a method of communication and a proximal point of access to sensation. Through a patchwork of formal techniques and spatial-temporal fragmentation, narratives are at once serialized and instant, while content can be consumed anywhere, or at multiple sites, or not at all. This presents a complicated arrangement of seemingly incommensurable elements to be sure, but it asserts the importance of multiple, combined modes of perception and the communities that we cultivate to make sense of them.