Though controversial politically and socially, TikTok is quickly becoming a platform that churns out cultural trends at breakneck speeds. There is no doubt that TikTok is a huge community and is incredibly influential on young adults.
As a college town, Eugene is a city with a perpetually young population. According to Ad Age, 42% of TikTok users are 18 to 24 years old, which means there are bound to be some TikTok content creators on the University of Oregon campus.
Easily the most popular TikToker on campus is softball player Haley Cruse. She has amassed 650,000 followers and over 16 million likes with her bubbly content that features snippets of her life as a college softball star — with a lot of dance challenges.
Cruse’s presence on TikTok represents the most idyllic version of a UO student: talented, wholesome and spirited. However, just as university sports don’t represent all that Eugene has to offer, there is a lot more to be explored on the app in terms of how the creators of UO and Eugene reflect their community.
Sifting through the hashtags #uoregon, #universityoforegon, #oregonducks and #eugeneoregon on TikTok gives a broader perspective of the content made by and for the people of the greater Eugene community.
It’s sweet to see the ways UO TikTokers use popular trends to depict their love for their school. A lot of videos are montages of their experience at UO, with clips of their friends, football games and parties with the likes of “Paradise” by Coldplay as background music, depicting their time at UO as a coming-of-age film. There is also no shortage of content about Ducks sports teams and athletes.
Other videos are less wholesome, depicting users’ lives as frustrated, busy students. You can even find a few users expressing their angst toward university president Michael Schill and his handling of the pandemic.
Like the community itself, the content about UO and Eugene is diverse and hard to generalize. A closer look at some popular content related to our community reveals the humor and creativity of those within it.
Cassie Ott, a junior studying communication disorders and sciences, is a student creator who likes to “make content that is relatable” while sometimes making fun of herself along the way. Her underrated gem is a sweet and funny rating of the places she has cried on campus. She rates the EMU as a 4/10 because there are “lots of people around” but she can also order Chipotle from her phone — something most UO students can probably relate to.
Though @worldeconomicforum is not a Eugene local user, one TikTok they created about Eugene’s methods of alternative policing is an interesting reflection of how Eugene’s values are seen from the outside. The NowThis-style video shows CAHOOTS workers, who do crisis intervention, responding to low-risk 911 calls. The overlaying text explains how these mental health workers help the most vulnerable population of the city while being a safer and cheaper option than police. The comments from Eugene locals are all supportive of CAHOOTS and the work they do in Eugene, advocating for other US cities to adopt similar social programs.
Lastly, the absolute funniest TikTok found in any UO-related hashtag comes from freshman Patrick Walker, AKA @officialnoodleboy on TikTok. In the video which has almost 390 thousand views, Walker shows off a pamphlet he received from UO depicting the history of the university’s mascot. The camera pans over 1923’s mascot of an actual stolen duck named Puddles, 1932’s sad, sack-like duck costume, and into the latter half of century with the more cartoonish looking duck mascots we have come to know.
Then he gets to 2002, revealing a monstrous looking anthropomorphic duck man that looks like the mixture of a cheesy superhero and the stuff of your worst nightmares. It begs the question that Walker asks for us, “What the fuck were we doing in 2002?”
Walker says that this video was a diversion from his usual TikToks which blend comedy and political commentary, but now that he is staying at the dorms, he could see himself “making more duck-themed content.”
This wry review of UO’s mascots over the years shows the quirks of the UO community in a way that is funny and accessible. As TikTok becomes further synonymous with youth culture, students like Walker and Ott stand to represent the personality of the greater UO community to the outside world. Scrolling through these hashtags on TikTok will provide you a little perspective on who we are as a community and where we are going through the lens of pop culture.
