The “Propaganda I Refuse To Fall For Trend”: Just a Laugh or a Right Wing Psyop?

Words: Emelia Gauch

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The Oxford Dictionary describes propaganda as “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view.” This is a definition few TikTok users consulted before applying the word to everything from situationships to Labubus. 

Across the platform, the word, or tag #propaganda, which now has over 200,000 posts, has been adopted by creators, mostly young women. In videos, these creators display a list of the propaganda “they refuse to fall for” as a clip from the song "I think about it all the time ft. bon iver" by Charli XCX plays. Items listed range widely. Popular ones include “skinnytok,” “minimalism,” “bras,” “9-5’s,” and every type of milk.

Some creators employ a relatively accurate definition of propaganda and use the TikTok trend to gesture towards the global rise in subtle and explicit right-wing values and politics. They call out “trad wives” and “MAHA” in their videos, aiming to bring attention to the harmful and predatory misinformation, marketing techniques, behaviours, and social norms that we are exposed to and consume daily.

Other creators adopt a more liberal definition of propaganda in which the word becomes synonymous with “trends.” Micro skirts, mixed metals jewellery, and jelly shoes are all fair game.

A majority of #propaganda videos mix both interpretations. The line between what creators view as genuinely harmful and what they simply dislike blurs as “excusing casual racism” and “skinny jeans” come together within a single list. Many creators seem aware that they are stretching the term. In an interview with the New York Times, Delaney Denton, whose #propaganda post has over 100,000 views, acknowledged, “‘I think it’s putting a spin on things that just feel a little off in our society but aren’t necessarily propaganda.’”
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Yet, it isn’t always clear where the self-aware misuse of “propaganda” ends and genuine misunderstanding begins, and, buried in these thousands of lists, between “matte lipstick” and “Chat GPT,” the trend devolves into what it sought to critique. 

Scrolling through #propaganda, videos posted by female content creators calling out “dating for fun,” “girl/boy bestfriends,” “going out and partying,” “having kids before having a ring,” and “hook-ups” appear over and over. Ironically, these judgments are often placed alongside moral values like “shaming people on the internet.”

These posts adopt a condescending tone, implying that women who “fall” for this so-called propaganda are unaware or naive. They suggest women who want to date for fun are victims of sexism or bad influence, rather than capable and consenting decision-makers. This sentiment veers into slut-shaming, and the quiet moralising of sexuality-related actions turns the trend from commentary to charged judgments, with personal choices framed as cultural manipulation. 

“Matcha, for example, is a highly mentioned drink in “propaganda I’m not falling for” videos, mostly included by white creators who regard the tea as a fad.”

In a TikTok captioned “it’s kind of weird xx,” @hunterleekawana critiques the “not like other girls”-adjacent energy the trend has developed. She notes that women use the form to look down on other women for making decisions they might not personally make: “If you don’t want to do it, don’t do it, but why are we posting this?”

Portraying decisions like hooking up as cultural manipulation corroborates conservative patriarchal ideals in an internet landscape already drowning in alpha-male podcasters and content that increasingly promotes traditional gender roles. By ignoring broader systematic and cultural contexts, in these instances, the trend perpetuates norms. 

Creators not only ignore cultural and systemic contexts as they list social behaviors, but also as they list consumer products. Matcha, for example, is a highly mentioned drink in “propaganda I’m not falling for” videos, mostly included by white creators who regard the tea as a fad.

TikTok content creator @yodadasbf calls out this problematic positioning, “The way [white people] turned matcha, a traditional tea used in Japanese ceremonies, into a trend just to go shit on it, saying it’s ‘disgusting’ and ‘consumerism propaganda’ is gonna make me lose my mind like is this not POC erasure????”

Birth control is also repeatedly featured on these lists, another problematic inclusion that many creators have taken issue with. @.isabellagrace warns against this labelling, highlighting the privileges that come with being able to access contraception. The issue, Isabella says in her video, isn’t the pill, but medical misogyny. 

@mel.on.medicine challenged the classification of birth control as “propaganda” by emphasising the importance of contraception to women’s liberation. She writes in her post, “Birth control isn’t propaganda. I’m afraid we may be falling for the propaganda.” As access to reproductive healthcare and reproductive rights continues to be targeted by governments worldwide, calling birth control propaganda can harm people’s real-life access by contributing to medical distrust, misinformation, and stigmatisation, and may deter young women from accessing contraception.

In some cases, the lack of information within these #propaganda posts is so complete that they start to lose any meaning at all, like in posts that describe teen pregnancy as propaganda. The trend’s sparse format leaves no room for clarification on how viewers are meant to interpret this statement, but, no matter the interpretation, labelling teen pregnancy as propaganda misses any real understanding of it. The creators posting this content or similar versions overlook disparities in access to sex education and contraception as the root cause of teen pregnancy. They either do not understand or fail to clarify that being a teen mother is not propaganda, but false information about sex and contraception can be. 

Strands, like these, of the “propaganda I’m not falling for” trend have evolved into perverse versions of the original, where cultural products, healthcare, and lived experiences are flattened. As misinformation spreads throughout government bodies and fascism looms, recognising this flattening and mislabeling when we see it is increasingly important, as is distinguishing between propaganda and cultural trends. When we mislabel items like birth control as propaganda, it reflects a deeper crisis of media literacy – one that hints at a possible future where we cannot realise what is and is not manipulation.