Siyadlala ku tiktok: Humour as a mask for gender-based bullying and digital harassment on the platform

This paper explores how TikTok users employ the phrase Siyazidlalela (“it’s a joke”) to perpetuate gender-based bullying and digital harassment, also highlight how humour often conceals harmful behavior. Despite TikTok’s community guidelines and policies aimed at protecting users particularly women from gendered abuse, the playful framing of harassment has become widespread. The paperexamines gender-based bullying within TikTok’s online culture, a platform that serves as both a space for creative expression and a site of gendered aggression. Using a desktop research approach, the paper reviews literature, reports, and digital media analyses to understand how TikTok’s algorithms, user interactions, and viral trends reinforce or challenge gender stereotypes. It investigates how harassment manifests through comments, duets, challenges, and trends, particularly targeting women, and gendernonconforming individuals. The paper show that while TikTok offers spaces for empowerment and gender expression, it simultaneously enables misogyny and toxic masculinity under the guise of humour captured in Siyazidlalela. Therefore, the paper recommends that the TikTok platform have to integrate culturally informed moderation strategies that recognise how humour such as the phrase “Siyadlala” can disguise harmful behaviour.