Why is Gen Z using TV language to discuss their lives on TikTok?

On TikTok, a young person sits on a bus and stares out the window. The caption reads, “What the fuck in the filler episode.” Another creator sits on their bed and stares up at the camera. Text covers their face. “I don’t think I’ve had a filler day in at least two years,” it says. “Not even an ad break. Something is always going horribly wrong and it just keeps going. This isn’t even a show this is a five part docuseries that some teenage girl is binging and won’t turn off.”

This particular TikTok has since garnered over 1.5 million views and 300,000 likes on the app. Remarks like “my whole life is a filler” and “my filler episodes are me crying over my other episodes” flood the comments section. The “filler episode” tag has over 22 million views.

So, why are TikTokkers using television jargon to make sense of their lives? “We use these TV terms because our world is absurd around us. We are in this age of ‘peak TV’ where so many people are consuming it,” Amanda Brennan, a meme librarian and senior director of trends at the digital marketing agency XX Artists, explained to Mashable.

A filler episode is an industry term to describe an episode of television that doesn’t contribute to the main plot of a show. On TikTok, it’s since become synonymous with an uneventful moment in your life.

Using the language of popular culture to discuss and understand your life isn’t a novel concept, but it reached new heights in 2020 with the rise of “main character syndrome,” or thinking of yourself as the main character in your life. The dialogue took off on TikTok when Ashley Ward uploaded the audio, “You have to start romanticizing your life / you have to start thinking of yourself as the main character.” More pointedly, thinking of yourself as the main character was a coping mechanism that allowed people to accept the intense early days of the pandemic as plot points in the story of their lives. 

Two years later, the main character is a fixture of the internet lexicon. It’s become a way of narrativizing your life on social media. As such, users have started to incorporate the language of television into their online vocabulary. Just like how eras were democratized on social media, now anyone can be the star of their very own television show that’s all in their head. 

TikTokkers aren’t just conceptualizing their lives using filler episodes; they’re also describing everyday situations using phrases like “crossover episode” and “spin off” — even going so far as addressing “the writers” of their show. Television language translates especially well when you’re filming a video of yourself to be consumed on a digital platform, just like an episode of television might be. 

“As video has become a dominant form of communication, it feels like you’re consuming your friends lives as TV shows,” Brennan said. “All of this social video consumption combined with entertainment consumption can create this big beautiful soup in your brain of ‘oh no, my life is also a TV show.'”

It also becomes a way for people to discuss their lives online without getting too personal. One of these TikToks reads, “When you used to be a series regular but you moved away and got your own spin off and now you’re waiting around for the holiday crossover episode.” Another says, “My Greatest Friend currently working on her college life storyline while I’m just waiting for the Halloween episode so I can make a cameo.” Both of these videos have accumulated nearly 2 million views. These are creators who are grappling with transitional periods of their life; they’re navigating how to live apart from their friends by casting everyone in a figurative television show.

“It’s kind of like a level set of language where you can talk through these feelings that you’re having to someone on TikTok. Someone can pick it up and be ‘OK, I know what this is talking about,'” explained Brennan. “It’s a boiled down taxonomy of putting yourself into an archetype.” You say that you’re in your filler episode or about to have a crossover episode, and it’s a shared language. While someone on the internet might not understand the nuances of your friendship, they will understand what a crossover episode with a friend means. 

Other videos are less about making sense of one’s life and more about putting the onus on someone else: the writers of their show. One of these videos reads, “To whoever is writing my show, I love that we’ve kept a consistent theme of me being a baddie with a big personality who doesn’t need a man. But I was thinking for this season I’d be ok with switching things up and adding in a (realistic) love interest. We don’t need every season ending up exactly the same :)” Another says, “Can the person writing the ‘college’ season of the show skip to the bit where i feel as close to my college friends as i did my high school mates. there’s only so many times i can ask someone’s major.” Brennan compared this phenomenon to the popularity of astrology. “It’s this comforting to think ‘I’m this way because someone else or like something else is causing it.'” 

The “writers of my show” trend is a passive way to manifest your destiny. It’s being a viewer instead of the main character, content to just watch life go by. In this trend, creators leave their fate in someone else’s hands. It’s not unlike the “my FBI agent” meme where users imagined an FBI agent investigating their digital footprint and judging them for it.

By viewing your life as a television show through the eyes of someone else, life’s everyday trials, tribulations, and mundanities become easier to understand — for you and your audience.