TikTok is so decisive in today’s communication that it is all the rage even when it copies external trends. It often inspires individuals, experts, companies and institutions to end up modernizing their information or promotion strategies. However, on other occasions, the platform and its users absorb with an overflowing imagination other movements that, in origin, are alien to them.
And this is the case of the so-called beefs. This word, which has acquired enormous popularity in a short time, was only used in the beginning in the hip-hop universe. From here he went to trap. It then invaded everyday speech. It refers to the verbal disputes that are dedicated to two – or more – contenders based on the defects, weak points, mistakes, mistakes, disloyalties or betrayals committed in the past, developed in the present or projected in the future.
Although in its original format it had degenerated into physical fights, the current adaptation tends to discard the punch to the face in favor of joking, teasing or flist-flast. The concept, which comes from the English word meaning meat or beef, is also used colloquially to imply that someone is protesting with remarkable intensity.
There are those who, in a considerably risky baroque pirouette, go back to the golden age of Spanish literature, when, supposedly, the writers Luis de Góngora and Francisco de Quevedo did the same. It is more convenient to heed the criteria of the analysts of the specialized publication I am rap. They clarify that the term beef is circumscribed to the dispute between artists.
They are part of war, but they are not even battles, they are weapons. If the degree of tension is lowered, you get to the musical beefs such as those of C. Tangana with Yung Beef or Los Chikos del Maíz or the roast battles between stars of commercial television or politics such as David Broncano, Berto Romero, Ana Morgade, Eva Soriano or Pablo Echenique on the Comedy Central channel.
TikTok has recently taken over: surfers – generally very young – take advantage of today’s big hits to piss off an ex-colleague, an old girlfriend or a new school enemy. They usually do it in the open, to get as much feedback as possible, and playing with subtitles that reproduce or are based on the lyrics of the singles, and the most sophisticated choreography and staging.
The usual thing is that they receive a response. The answer motivates a reaction, and this reaction, a counterreply. The views accumulate and the audience polarizes, exactly the same as it does in the professional environment, which shows that, on Tiktok, thematic and aesthetic innovation always travels with a round trip ticket.
