Silence, Brand! 01.27.25

🦀 cute winter boots + DeepSeek + quietcations + immigration red cards + Julia Fox stans mayo + menswear PFW + beyblade olympics + Threads ads + why you want gen z's loyalty (hint: $1.3Bn) 🦀

oh snap, it’s national geographic day—
a perfect excuse to channel your inner crab 🦀✨
tough
adaptable
& thriving (in pure chaos)
those little guys survive everything
(carcinization supremacy, anyone?)

the world is wild,
but this issue’s wilder!!!
& crabs?
they’d 100% approve of

what we’ve got coming your way today:

• today’s fresh catches:

  • our download on “cute winter boots”–and we’re not talkin’ Uggs!!!

  • immigration red cards–how this small tool is helping immigrants

  • silent travel aka “quietcations”–we wannabe like SZA

  • Paris Fashion Week designers didn’t come to play (Jacquemus shot their runway on an iphone[!!!])

• trends:

  • the “’dangerous alien’” trend is breaking our hearts but raising awareness about immigration in the US

  • ski vacation transition trend–Pinterest was right!!!

  • piercing & tattoo trends taking "visible ink" into "too late to hide from your mom" territory

• and don't even get us started on…

  • Taylor’s going to the Super Bowl (again)

  • Julia Fox turning mayo into a literal accessory

  • Contraception Begins at Erection Act

  • Kai Cenat’s hosting the Beyblade olympics

  • Dave Franco 4 Luigi biopic

  • Dolly Parton joins The Wiggles (?!!)

What Are "Cute Winter Boots"?

Time zones are weird.
It's 10pm in Greenland.
It's 8am in China.
It's 1930s Germany in the U.S.

After Trump’s first week back in office, his strategy of shock doctrine has sparked anti-Trump protests worldwide (which TikTokers report are being censored in the US) and caused many to join together (including PBS and Ben and Jerry’s) using coded language to organize offline to respond or resist effectively.

We’ve gone down a bit of a rabbit hole (#researchgate if you will) and wanted to provide a quick breakdown about the “cute winter boots" coded topic and what it’s related to if it pops up on your FYP.

@bmekweenWhat’s your favorite Beyonce song? #beyoncebowl #cowboycarter #cowgirlboots #beyoncetour

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Disclaimer: This is not about Uggs

TikTok users are no strangers to creativity, and as restrictions tighten, they’ve found increasingly clever ways to express themselves. Enter "cute winter boots," a seemingly innocent phrase that’s taken on a deeper, more covert meaning within the community. This linguistic workaround has emerged as a way to sidestep censorship and avoid triggering TikTok’s ever-watchful content moderation algorithms, which have left users feeling more surveilled than ever in this TikTok AD era (aka post 14hr ban).

The coded language has become a lifeline for TikTokers discussing controversial or vulnerable topics to avoid content suppression. Now, terms like “cute winter boots” are being employed as euphemisms for subjects as varied as immigration policies, government surveillance, and other topics surrounding fascism.

There’s a larger cultural shift on TikTok, where users increasingly feel like they’re operating under a magnifying glass. This sense of hyper-surveillance is more than just paranoia. TikTok’s algorithm, known for its mysterious precision, now aggressively flags content for violating community guidelines, sometimes with little to no explanation. Creators report having videos taken down for innocuous reasons, accounts shadowbanned, or even permanent suspensions.

Immigration and TikTok’s Role

For many TikTok users, the platform has started to feel like a digital panopticon. This climate of censorship and surveillance isn’t occurring in isolation. It intersects with larger social and political issues, including immigration policy. From secret service coming to an elementary school in Chicago to confront a student about an anti-Trump video posted to a Texas teacher attempting to out students on X/Twitter.

Under Trump’s leadership, immigration enforcement measures like ICE raids are expected to intensify. Mississippi lawmakers are already proposing new legislation to pay bounty hunters to catch immigrants without legal status. The fear of deportation and family separation is palpable within immigrant communities, many of whom rely on TikTok as a space for solidarity, education, and advocacy.

@jessie.8.1.8🤔 #kamala #blululu #4am #4amclub #democrats #fyp #democrats

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Adding another layer of complexity is the resurfacing of "lace code," a real but hyper-regional phenomenon from the 1980s and 1990s in alternative communities. Shoelace colors were used as subtle signals of political ideologies, particularly in anti-racist skinhead subcultures.

TikTok unearthed lace code in 2020, attempting to apply it post-COVID by calling people out for not wearing what they deemed the "correct" laces in real life settings. The effort quickly fizzled, revealing a stark divide between online activism and real-life actions. While white or red laces remain widely understood as inherently negative, the supposed rules for other colors were largely fabricated, highlighting the limits of translating digital discourse into reality. This revival of lace code, coinciding with renewed immigration debates and the rise of neo-Nazi groups mobilizing under Trump, underscores how political symbols can be co-opted and misinterpreted in modern contexts.

@sammyscrumpDon’t forget what you choose to wear is political. #america #yellowlaces #boots

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In Brief

As TikTok creators grapple with these overlapping issues, they’ve turned to humor, resilience, and coded language as acts of resistance. “Cute winter boots” is more than a euphemism; it’s a symbol of the adaptability and resourcefulness that define online communities. Still, there’s a growing sense that these measures are only temporary fixes for systemic problems—both within the app and in the broader sociopolitical landscape.

For now, creators will continue to navigate these challenges, finding new ways to speak their truths, even if it means doing so in code. But as censorship tightens and political pressures mount, one thing is clear: the fight for digital spaces that truly empower marginalized voices is far from over. [Dejaih Smith]

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time to claw our way into the depths,
where the Wi-Fi’s weak but the chaos is strong 🫧

grab your snorkel, you crusty legends—
it’s scroll o’clock

🦀
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DeepSeek Chinese AI chatbot sparks market turmoil for rivals (BBC)
Shares in major US technology firms have dropped due to the rapid success of a low-cost Chinese chatbot called DeepSeek, which has become the most downloaded free app in the US. The emergence of DeepSeek has raised questions about the future of America's AI dominance and the scale of investments US firms are planning, while also sparking concerns about the impact on the AI supply chain.

@cnbcCNBC’s Steve Kovach reports on how investors fear DeepSeek launched its large language model cheaper than U.S. companies. Find more at the #linkinbio #CNBC

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