A Secret Third Thing: Explicating the Role of FilmTok Influencers in Cultural Production

The influencer industry continues to experience growth in the mid-2020s. Intersecting with the film industry, hobbyists and aspirational laborers alike now engage in influencer practices on TikTok to make visible their relation to the film world. This study utilizes thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 20 FilmTok content creators to examine how these digital laborers negotiate their legitimacy with regards to industry, platform, and audience. The experiences of these content creators showcase how they push and pull on previously imagined boundaries between what is considered critical as opposed to commercial through their platformized work. They highlight neoliberal conditions in the 21st century, experiencing precarity from industry opportunities, TikTok as a platform, and their audiences. Given that academic explication of FilmTok is minimal, this study is exploratory. This work has implications for who gets to be seen as doing legitimate work, in whose eyes, and under which conditions.