“Stories are powerful. The stories that we believe. The stories that we live into shape our daily practices, from moment to moment” (Loveless 2019). Natalie Loveless, Associate Professor of Contemporary Art and Theory at the University of Alberta, makes this statement in her book How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation to illustrate the importance of narrative understanding. The stories we tell, the way we tell them, and how they are interpreted are foundational elements of communication science and (of equal importance) the art and humanities that are created in tandem. Narrative communication has evolved simultaneously with the evolution of technological and networking practices. Stories are no longer only being told linearly, directly, and in a single medium of delivery. The media creation that the popularization of social media has prompted is unlike any communication that has been witnessed in the past. As Colette Daiute at the 2014 Interactive Digital Storytelling Conference explains that “[d]igital storytelling is multi-modal, multi-interactive, playful, and sometimes profound. While complex, dynamic, and unpredictable, interactive digital storytelling is symbolic communication and, as such, invites analysis as well as surprise and enjoyment” (Daiute 2014). Social medias like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Snapchat have invited users in recent years to create and experience user generated content to communicate with their respective networks and (sometimes) beyond. However, there has never been a medium of communication and media production that has achieved the popularity that TikTok has accrued. Not only is TikTok one of the most downloaded apps of all time, it is also a platform that is unmatched by its media counterparts. By combining collaborative narrative creation, memetic theory, mimicry, in-app audio and visual media tools, and user based algorithms, TikTok has created a medium that promotes cultural growth and collective creation and understanding. This is a phenomena that could have some penetrative implications on the way users communicate on and outside of the app and how they interpret culture and information. Furthermore, there is very little scholarship on TikTok. The American app Musical.ly was purchased by ByteDance, a Chinese company that created TikTok, in 2017, and has therefore only recently achieved popularity in North America where my research is situated. According to Jonathon Hutchinson based on submissions to the Association of Internet Researchers conference 2019, “The research that has been submitted can be read as a very strong overview and indicator of where the field is currently, and where it is heading”(Hutchinson 2019). My proposed work aligns with ‘hot’ internet research topics identified by Hitchinson, namely research into algorithms and platforms. And while this year’s AIR conference saw “a rise of focus on emerging Chinese social media platforms”(Hutchinson 2019), the focus was on WeChat and Weibo, without a single paper dedicated to Tik Tok. My research is located in an increasingly urgent area of interest in the field and fills a gap.