Despite the song’s arguable success — it has nearly 13 million streams on Spotify — no specific dance trend for the song has taken off on TikTok because most Black dancers are refraining from posting their choreography.
Despite choreographing elaborate — but easily replicated — dances, few Black creators receive the same recognition and monetization that the white creators who imitate them do.
And creators who aren’t Black will water it down to do the bare minimum of the dance and claim it as their own,” Moore said via Instagram DM.
TikTok and Twitter users noted that in the absence of set choreography, the dance videos that non-Black creators are posting are uninspired at best.
“For all my melanated brothers and sisters of the African diaspora, we are on strike,” TikTok creator Capkenknuckles said in a video about the lack of dances under the sound.
Jalaiah Harmon, a then-14-year-old student, inadvertently created one of 2020’s most lasting dances when she posted a video of herself dancing to K Camp’s “Lottery.” Her dance, known as “Renegade” because of the song’s hook, went uncredited until a New York Times profile revealed that she was the dance’s original creator.
While the practice of including dance credit in captions is on the rise, white creators continue to benefit from dances by Black choreographers.
TikTok and Twitter users also pointed out that Easterling was given an opportunity that few Black creators were afforded.
Many of the dance videos using “Thot Shit” that were choreographed by white creators have been criticized by other TikTok users as having low energy and requiring minimal effort.
In another variation trending among predominantly white creators, TikTok users will lip sync the first few lines of the song, and then turn around and wave their arms when Megan raps about twerking.
“I don’t want to hear another fucking white woman ever say that TikTok dances and TikTok trends aren’t entirely stolen from Black women,” creator xosugarbunny, who is white, said in an exasperated video.
A few Black creators are still dancing to the song, despite criticism from their fellow dancers.
Though the reception to Skai Beauty’s dance was overwhelmingly positive, many commenters fretted that the choreography would go uncredited.
The noticeable lack of dynamic choreography to “Thot Shit,” a song made to go viral on TikTok, has shone a light on the impact Black creators have on the platform’s culture.
Two months after Mashable reported on the creator-led campaign calling for better visibility on the For You Page, TikTok admitted that its moderators were trained to suppress content by users marked “vulnerable to cyberbullying,” including disabled, fat, and queer creators.
During the height of Black Lives Matter protests last year, it appeared TikTok was blocking hashtags related to George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Moore made it clear that most Black creators participating in the dance strike aren’t opposed to white creators dancing entirely, but that the community wants to be recognized and appreciated for carrying TikTok’s culture.
“People still need to acknowledge Black creators and not ignore us in any community that we partake in,” Moore said.