#NationalityofMen: The gamification of racialized attractiveness as entertainment laundering on TikTok

This article examines the viral TikTok trend #NationalityOfMen—a seemingly trivial Effect that invites users to rank men from 10 “nationalities.” Extending scholarship on racialized beauty standards and digital media, we systematically scrutinize the cyber ecosystem that reproduces hierarchical racialized masculinity in this trend: the Effect’s interface and design, the user’s instantiation of the Effect, and TikTok’s platform affordances. Employing Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis, we identify the artifacts, practices, and beliefs embedded in these interlocking components. We argue that the Effect operates as a neoliberal racial project by encoding racial misrepresentation, enshrining racialized sorting, and enshrouding racialized desirability. Under the illusion of choice, users become “unwitting constituents” reproducing color lines of racialized masculinity, although some mobilize strategic essentialism for racial empowerment. TikTok’s architecture shields accountability and engenders “cybertypes” unchecked. We propose the notion of “entertainment laundering” to describe how online entertainment activities insidiously whitewash racist content playfully, performatively, and publicly.