TikTok as a Stage: Performing Rural #farmqueer Utopias on TikTok

In this paper, we examine how an under-studied group in HCI, rural queer farmers, use the social media platform TikTok to perform rural queer utopias. Queer utopia, coined by queer theorist Jose Munoz, is a way of using queer aesthetics and performance to expose heterosexual norms and imagine worlds of hopeful queer alternatives. Through close reading and interpretation of TikTok, we examine content made by rural queer farmers on TikTok and ask how it enacts queer utopias. We show these farmers perform queer identity in rural farming spaces which subverts stereotypes of both who is queer and who can farm, and their videos also enact queer political utopias by connecting farming to social justice and radical sustainability. We explore how TikTok offers a sociotechnical stage where queer rural farmers can perform queer utopias in ways that celebrate creative and generative uses of platforms by queer folks.