What My Dog’s TikTok Fame Says About Gen X

Until recently, I’ve never really thought about my parents’ online presence. Sure, I knew my mom took pictures of me at milestones in my life to post on Facebook and I knew my dad sometimes liked to browse current events on X, formerly known as Twitter. 

What I didn’t know was my mom has been leading a double life online.

I only learned this information when, while searching her name on Google to find her Facebook account, a TikTok account under someone called Finn Shanahan appeared in the results.

Confusingly enough, the real Finn Shanahan can’t create a TikTok page as he is a one-year-old, 45-pound English sheepdog-poodle mix with a nibbling habit and a sour, human-like face. My mom had dedicated an entire secret TikTok page to our family dog without our knowledge. The account currently has a staggering 11.5k followers. 

I was surprised not only at the sheer amount of people who willingly followed my dog on TikTok, but also by the content of the videos he was in. The most popular posts on the page are nonsensically edited slideshows of Finn hopping around to some unfitting and bizarre sound, with a gaudy filter to top it off. 

Checking the comments only fueled my confusion. Rather than the expected troll comments and bots, I was met with real people’s earnest compliments. Dumbfounded, I realized there were real human people who found the posts not just entertaining, but compelling enough to engage with. 

Curiously, the overwhelming majority of people interacting with my mom’s — or Finn’s — posts were people in her own age group — Generation X. I found it odd just how many people could see these objectively hard-to-understand videos and watch them for genuine entertainment purposes, rather than for the sake of irony.

Don’t get me wrong — these videos are endearing, and it’s heartwarming to see my mom wants to share the fun she has with our dog with the world. Yet I’m curious if this odd editing and media creation form is unique to members of Gen X on TikTok, and the way they experience the internet.

An example of this wide-scale, socially detached content creation style becomes apparent through a filter which floated around TikTok in July called “Gen X Rise.” The filter is a superimposed ‘X’ plastered across the face in a Scottish-warpaint-like style. A number of Gen X’ers used this filter when expressing pride in their generation. 

There are also other videos floating around TikTok with the same defensive, oddly filtered style of creation seemingly unique to Gen X.

While Millennials are also involved in inter-generational online conversations, they’re much more versed in video editing skills and seem to have generally more coherent styles than Gen X. Yet, there are phenomon noted like the “Millienial Pause,” describing the beat Millennials take before speaking in already recording video which sets them apart in age. So perhaps it’s just the style older online community members fall into.

Yet not all older content creators are like this, as there are plenty of creators for whom this observation doesn’t apply. Many are artistically experienced or have worked in media fields. One of my favorite examples is actor Kyle MacLachlan’s TikTok. He is a rather young Baby Boomer, but he still keeps a campy, relevant tone in all his videos. 

So then, why does the average Gen X’er on TikTok seem so disconnected and defensive? Perhaps they see themselves growing older and becoming irrelevant with TikTok’s primarily young adult users, who perceive the Gen X’ers with parent-levels of lameness, and want to form as a community set apart from expectation. 

Gen X’ers want a distraction from their taxing jobs, politics, money talk and maybe even roles as parents. TikTok can be that well-deserved place for distraction and community. While the community might be built through strange filters or videos of pets, it’s held firm by earned rest and a desire to express things they love. 

Those desires for an online community are blocked by the wall of irony Gen Z holds up as today’s young adults. Perhaps if Gen Z began to live a bit more earnestly, we’d be a little weirder online, too.