An audio sample titled “Don’t use if straight tiktok” has been circulating this summer, but it’s not music or dialogue. It’s an incessant thud-thud-thud meant to simulate knocking.
According to StayHipp, this sample apparently started with a July 6 video that featured a Kevin Gates song, as well as the exaggerated sound of a bird knocking on a window. That knocking sound then started showing up in videos of creators trying to get into certain spaces, like the White House after Trump announced a TikTok ban. Others pointed out the hypocrisy of hateful people trying to enter heaven.
Straight TikTok, the side of the app devoted more to mainstream dances and collab houses, has become a source of parody, hence the title of the sample. This is audio for alt TikTok and its subcultures, and participants got a little more existential with places they’re trying to get into: like the astral plane or a jar of salsa.
Stranger Things star Noah Schnapp got in on the trend, too, applying the sound to his dog scratching on his bedroom door, though the comments were reliably filled with Demogorgon jokes.
The ownership of audio along straight/alt TikTok lines goes beyond this meme, however. There are other examples of audio not to use if you’re on straight TikTok, or audio to interact with to get back to alt TikTok.
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