You never know what the next trend on TikTok will be, the platform that has popularized forgotten Netflix movies overlooked by the algorithm, books that barely sold in their first edition, more or less absurd songs, and even historical events that the Generation Z wouldn’t otherwise know about. It’s a mishmash filled with ideas, memes, trends, youth, and an inexplicable weirdness that millennials (not to mention the Gen X) find hard to comprehend, which has suddenly put Franz Kafka in the spotlight.
A Kafkaesque result
It’s not that suddenly millions of teenagers started reading ‘The Metamorphosis’ by pure coincidence or hive mind. Or maybe it’s a little bit of both. It all started during the MET Gala when a cockroach made its way onto the red carpet. The initial video made a joke about it, as if it were a tweet: “Has the 2023 MET Gala brought Kafka to life!?” It went viral with over 2,000 comments and 433,000 likes, and the snowball effect began.
But it didn’t stop at ‘The Metamorphosis.’ Soon, young people started comparing any cheesy teenage WhatsApp message to phrases from ‘Letters to Milena’ (“It’s never enough of what I have of you in my hands”), and memes, profiles, biographies, and real-life comparisons, combining the author’s cynicism with the everyday life of any young person, have grown exponentially.
The hashtag #kafka already has a total of 547 million views (quite impressive, right?), including top quotes from Franz Kafka with hundreds of thousands of likes, love declarations with millions of views, and even parodies that say, “When he calls you beautiful, but Kafka said, ‘In a way, you are material for poetry, you are filled with nebulous subtleties that I want to spend a lifetime deciphering.'”
And the comments are not joking around: “I love you, Kafka,” “I need a Kafka in my life,” “They want a Kafka, but they’re not a Milena”… And no, there’s no post-irony or attempt to joke; they are completely serious. If you thought TikTok was all about dances, copying each other, and leaving originality (and culture, while we’re at it) behind, it’s time to stop yelling at a cloud and embrace the booktokers, their love for Kafka, and the absurdity of life. And if you don’t like it, who knows, maybe the next video will be about cats, right?
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