TikTok and ‘Irish’ Misinformation
Words by Amy Louise.
The concept of Irish identity is a very complicated thing. On one hand, we are a culture that suffered under the iron grasp of British colonial oppression for numerous centuries, a fact still felt to this day with the continued divide between the north and south as well as the significant loss of both our language and culture. On the other hand, we are a historically nomadic group, frequently abandoning the island for figuratively greener pastures at numerous points throughout history. Once landed in these new countries, Irish people have been able to eventually surpass any initial discrimination. For example, in America, Irish people easily transformed from the oppressed to the oppressor, becoming landowners, slaveowners and eventually, cops. Few cultures simultaneously play the role of the oppressor and the oppressed but the Irish have historically played both roles to a T, and we still do to this day.
As such, the difference between the Irish at home and the successors of those who left is vast. The Irish at home have their own unique issues to deal with regarding their identity, including but not limited to the decline of our native language, religious guilt and most glaringly, an increasingly persistent far-right movement that refuses to accept the notion that Irishness could be anything but white, and only white. The descendants of Irish diaspora, as opposed to the actual Irish diaspora, in turn, cling to any semblance of Irish culture they can find, be this art, the language, or our mythology and history.
Regardless of what country you emigrate from, there will always be a certain romantic element applied to the land you left. The image of the green rolling hills of Ireland is a well-known image across the world. Traditionally portrayed as a land of simplicity, nature and magic, the image many people living outside the country hold of Ireland still remains the same as it did the first time The Quiet Man (1952) screened in cinemas. As such, descendants of Irish immigrants still subscribe to this green utopia, either choosing to focus solely on the more magical elements of our culture, hyper-fixating on everything from fairy forts to our mythological gods, or else subscribing to a notion of “Irishness” seen only in foreign Guinness advertisements and Paddy’s day merchandise.
Maureen O’Hara and John Wayne in ‘The Quiet Man’.
This behaviour has existed for as long as the Irish have been leaving Ireland.This begs the question, is it an issue at all? Maybe not, if these people kept their opinions and thoughts internalised and didn’t share them with the world. However with the advent of the internet and society’s ever-increasing ability to share our thoughts with millions of people at whim, it’s starting to become a very real issue. Misinformation has always been a problem when it comes to Irish descendants and their quest to remain close to the country. This can range from laughable opinions on our histories and mythologies, for example, the far-fetched claims that Mary Magdalene taught healing to the druids and the treatment of An Táin as a honest-to-god historical text. However there are also darker interpretations, such as the prevailing myth that the Irish were enslaved, which many people still believe despite evidence explaining otherwise.
Enter TikTok, one of the more recent avenues in which we can share our thoughts and opinions with others, this time packaged in short 60-second videos that will satisfy even the most dire of attention spans. Like most things on the internet, TikTok is a dubious source of education. The inability to properly link sources, a word-character limit on video descriptions and the fact you can literally say anything you want without verification are just a few reasons why you should not take anything learned from a 35 second video clip as gospel. However, this hasn’t stopped many people from using the medium to create short educational videos, a trend that is even encouraged by TikTok itself. This is an issue for Irish people in particular because alongside instructional cooking and DIY videos, you have a new community of people, generally Irish descendants as well as members of the pagan, cottagecore and fairycore communities on the app, who promote a blatantly misinformed idea of both Ireland and Irishness. Unfortunately for the Irish, people are falling for it. As of writing this article, there are an estimated 689 million people using the app. It’s currently growing faster than Facebook and Snapchat and 16% of its user-base is aged between 16-24, a particularly impressionable demographic. With a never-ending supply of content dictated by an incredibly sensitive algorithm, it has never been easier for information to spread like wildfire, and that’s where the problem lies.
A quick scroll through #irishmythology, #irish, #irishamerican, among other tags, will instantly provide a variety of informational videos around the same topic; Ireland, obviously. Some will provide abridged breakdowns of our mythological figures and how best to worship them, citing authentic worshipping rituals akin to exactly how the ancient Irish did it, despite the fact we have no way of knowing that for sure. Another will explain the concept of the fairy forts and the mysterious “fae”, a word that isn’t actually used to refer to Irish fairies at all. One such video claims that St. Patrick burnt all the books containing druidic healing knowledge and then unceremoniously killed all the druids, who existed in a society that notably did not write anything down. Another video proclaims that over half of Irish society was enslaved and sent to the West Indies, when in fact, these people were actually indentured labourers who still remained in control of their own lives. In fact, many Irish people also owned slaves and played a direct hand in their misery. These myths, fairytales and in the case of the slave myth, blatant lies, litter TikTok’s “For You” page, receiving thousands of views at a time and continuously spawning copycat videos as people learn these so-called “facts'' and decide to make their own content surrounding it.
Róisín McNally, or as TikTok users may know her, “roro_the_terrible”, has dedicated much of her time to educating people on Irish culture and mythology on the app. She explains “there’s not a lot of media in which we can talk about Irish mythology… we might have the books we had when we were children but there’s less of that sort of media that we can consume as adults. The stuff that does exist is interpreted as either very academic or very serious”. In turn, she also spends a significant amount of time fact checking and correcting other users, stating “a literal Google search will tell you ‘oh, that's incorrect’. But then you're seeing the same sort of misinformation carried online, the difference is now people are able to respond with videos and be like, ‘Oh, my God, that's amazing. I didn't know that’ and comment and begin conversations... And I don't believe academic discussions belong in the comment sections, but you'll go in and you'll see someone saying something very factually incorrect. And you'll see somebody comment about it, and they'll decide ‘I'm going to [make a video] too’. And they'll take something they kind of [sic] heard in passing, and not do a 10-minute Google search and just carry on”. Róisín goes on to explain that some people will think ‘oh, they have 100,000 followers’. Clearly, they know what they're talking about.’ They have 50,000 followers, ‘oh, they can't be wrong’. Like, why would they say this? It sounds right. But I'm not going to research that because this person tells me it's right. When they do their own research, which is great in the end, unfortunately it might come too late, because they might have already done or said something incredibly offensive or ignorant. And that's the huge thing that comes out of it, pure ignorance”.
A particularly prominent genre of Irish culture content on TikTok are videos about Irish mythology and the more mystical aspects of our culture. While there is a sizable community of legitimate educators on the app, including Róisín, there are also a lot of videos being made by people with a surface-level knowledge of Irish culture at best, and grand delusions at worst. These creators have constructed a particular narrative about Ireland and its people, equating us to some variety of elven folk straight from The Lord of the Rings. While us Irish are certainly as attractive as elves in The Lord of the Rings, this hyperfixation on but one aspect of a rich and storied culture is problematic at best, particularly when it navigates into the realm of misinformation.
This issue is mainly prevalent amongst people in the online pagan communities, along with those who subscribe to cottagecore/fairycore/dark academia aesthetics (it’s a TikTok thing), and isn’t limited to people of Irish descent. These videos focus on aspects of Irish mythology and pagan Ireland, fetishising these particular aspects of our culture as if it’s the only thing worth talking about, and continuously spreading yet more misinformation, be it stories about St Patrick, Irish pagan traditions, use of the language, and more. Considering that much of these histories are either mythological or sparse, technically people can believe what they want, however it becomes problematic when these more fantastical histories are being claimed as honest facts to impressionable people. “One great example I saw was this one girl who had 100,000 followers, and this video had 100,000 likes,” cites Róisín, “it was about the Tuath Dé Danann and I first thought ‘that's amazing, it's great that she's talking about that’, but everything she said in the video was factually incorrect. Particularly she says that the Tuath Dé Danann were the first people of Ireland which, from what we know, from The Book of Invasions, they're like the sixth, and all this other stuff… I didn't correct her on it either because I thought, well, that's what she believes it is. It is misinformation, but it's not harmful misinformation. But then you move on to people talking about the fairies, and they might see someone, I don't know, get too close to a fairy tree [for example]. And then it becomes a bit more serious”. Róisín explained that oftentimes this can lead to claims online such as “what you’re doing will upset the fairies, the Irish didn’t do that, here are records of them doing this accurately”, which isn’t the case, effectively turning the issue from something minor in to yet another case of factual misinformation.
While certainly not as serious as another issue which I’ll delve into later, these particular cases of misinformation can be harmful because they hearken to an Ireland that doesn’t really exist anymore, if it ever existed in the first place. Anyone living in Ireland knows that while stories of púca and the Aos Sí continue to be told, they are more so confined to local legend rather than an established nationwide tradition of worship. However, a certain percentage of the pagan communities on TikTok plug a particular variant of “Celtic paganism” that is falsely attributed to the ancient traditions enacted by those living in pre-Christian Ireland, or more problematically, to rituals enacted by all Irish people to this day. As Róisín explains, “they start incorporating [pagan traditions] in different ways and saying factually incorrect things like, Oh, I'm creating an altar so I can worship the ‘fae’ and I think ‘where is that based off of? There's no written study”. Róisín went on to explain that the use of the word “fae”, a now-popular term on TikTok to describe the mythical fairies in Irish culture, is an incorrect term. The TikTok version of these “ancient Irish traditions” is a “sort of hybrid between the practices of Wiccan traditions, or Germanic and Romani traditions, and then just throwing our gods in there instead. It's very confusing. And these people are like, well, this is factually correct” Róisín explains, “ You can practice whatever way you want, but you have to recognise that it's all Neo-Paganism. It's not something that's a 1000 year old practice”.
While there is certainly an active pagan and druid community within the country, its size and influence is likely no different to that of most western countries. As Róisín puts it, “the wider issue is when [people who believe the misinformation] come to Ireland and they become very aggressive because ‘oh, why don't Irish people know more about their mythology than we do? Irish people are idiots. They’re so modern and they shouldn't be”. Much in the same way that Paris syndrome is a reality for many tourists coming to France, a similar experience is likely had by those who believe this information and finally come to Ireland. Ireland is not a mythical fairyland of yore, it is a particularly green country with an overabundance of hotels, a housing crisis and a despicable direct provision system. Certain members of these communities have hyper-fixated on the mythical aspects of Irish culture to the point where they present an image of Ireland that just does not exist. These people, when they do visit, explains Róisín, end up “not exactly disgusted, but they're upset, and they get very upset then with Irish people for not knowing enough about what they interpret is the best part of our culture”.
The people who hyperfixate on tales of a magical green island in the Atlantic likely do so because it provides a more mystical and interesting alternative to their everyday lives. The sudden burst in content relating to such misinformation in the past year can likely be attributed to the dire circumstances the entire world has been living in over the last 18 months, even if the misinformation itself has prevailed for decades. While it may seem harmless to an extent, it is actually incredibly problematic to subscribe to a certain image of a culture and be insulted or upset when the reality proves otherwise, even going so far as to insist that your ideal is better.
“What I think encompasses Irish culture the best, and you'll laugh at me, is The Hardy Bucks or the The Young Offenders, because they relate more to current Irish morals and values. You might hear our mythology mentioned here or there, or you might see some art in the background… but it also involves our humour, our sports, our drinking culture, our youth and our comedy especially. But if you show that to an American for example, who has a fantasised idea of what Ireland's meant to be, they'll be greatly insulted,” states Róisín, “We can't base everything around [sic] what we believe in and what our values are over something from over 1000 years ago, it's great that we have [these histories and mythologies] but it's not everything. And they need to recognise that”.
Jock and Conor the titular ‘Young Offenders’.
Some might wonder why Irish culture is such a misinformed topic. Misinformation exists everywhere, but very few are as widely believed as the facts spewed about the Irish, be it everything from dubious claims on the fate of pagan worshippers in Early Christian Ireland to the prevailing slave myth. As Róisín states, “people are constantly looking for reasons why the Irish are victims. Yeah, we're victims of circumstance, look at our population, look at the impact of our culture and the language that we're currently speaking. That's in which the sense [sic] we're victims, we as people are not victims anymore. We're fixing that. And that's not what's coming across, what's coming across is that we're still victims”. Even more so, the narrative is that the Irish are victims but most importantly “we are over it”, a common line that is quite obviously attempting to put down minority demands for equal rights and justice, such as the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as conversations surrounding cultural appropriation. One such video, now deleted from the app, featured an Irish-American woman proclaiming that wearing green and drinking green beer on St. Patrick’s day was cultural appropriation, but the Irish don’t care because “we’re not pussies”.
The grim reality of this particular spread of misinformation and prevailing victim complex is the fact that these fabricated histories are being weaponised to suit a false narrative. The misinformation spreads so quickly because it makes people feel better about the position they hold in society, and any “icky” ethnic and racial guilt that will exude from this. It allows a person to excuse themselves of any racist or discriminatory ideologies because “my ancestors had it worse”, or allow themselves to feel an undeserved kinship with downtrodden minorities when in fact, descendants of the Irish abroad, particularly in America, often operate in the higher parts of society, working as police officers, CEOs and even presidents of an entire country. More importantly, these particular Irish descendants are more often than not, white, and thus benefit from an established privilege completely unknown to many of the minorities that they claim to share similar experiences with. As Róisín cites “The thing is, for some people, they're going to hear the slave myth, they're going to hear somebody with 20,000 followers say, the Irish were slaves too, we were taken to the West Indies and treated like slaves, and like [sic], that's incorrect. But people are going to hear that… and then that might result in them hearing that perhaps another black person was shot, and they're like, ‘well, you know, I understand because I'm Irish, and we were slaves too’ … and then that's the problem. When it comes into the real world with the Black Lives Matter protests, you'll have people being like, ‘well, maybe they should get over it. I'm Irish, my ancestors were slaves too, we got over it’. That's dangerous”.
Noel Ignatiev’s informative book on Irish assimilation into American society.
While the experience of being Irish in the UK throughout history was certainly one with its own trials and tribulations, throughout the rest of the world, particularly now in the 21st century, white Irish descendants operate just fine and are generally not ostracised for their ethnicity. The people who create content around these falsities and the people who help spread it are really just clinging to false facts about their ancestors so they can portray themselves as a “white person with flavour”. Regardless of the reasoning behind these actions, it undermines the role white Irish people play in reinforcing institutional racism, both in Ireland and abroad.
Be it a hyperfixation on an aspect of our culture that is veering towards an elf fetish, or a sinister attempt to sidestep admitting your own racial privilege, misinformation regarding Irish culture is a topic that needs to be addressed. It is not an issue that only exists on TikTok, but has in fact existed on forums, Tumblr and god knows where else for years. However, the mechanics and widespread use of TikTok in particular make it the perfect medium in which to spread lies and delusions fast. Thanks to the work of Róisín, as well as many other educated TikTokers, some of the delusions can be quelled amongst some, but for those who react to fact-checking with anger and offence, the videos and content continue to be spread, ripe for the next person who wants to don a vaguely medieval dress and claim that St. Patrick commanded an army of púca that attacked anyone for using herbal medicines, or whatever else they feel like proclaiming on that particular day.
