Parasocial Asian American Re-Parenting

(Re-)Raised by TikTok

still from Spirited Away, dir. Hayao Miyazaki

Mining my childhood for #content

As my parents’ only child in a blended family, I don’t have the benefit of siblings with whom to commiserate. In other words, I don’t really have anyone who can verify the crazy shit that goes down in any emotionally dysregulated household, not to mention a mixed-race one. Suffice it to say that my formative years are a weekly subject in therapy. 

I think anyone worth knowing can relate to the lament that our parents had no earthly clue how to raise us (that this is also a slogan of the propaganda arm of the gay agenda is immaterial to this discussion). My childhood left me feeling absolutely depleted and confused about the world, with no one to corroborate the neglect and abuse. This, in essence, is the predicament of the only child. It’s why we’re so weird and fun and/or catastrophic at parties. Throw in being the biracial child of people from mutually intolerant families and you have a real rodeo clown of a person: me. 

In a post-Minor Feelings World

Being Asian American in a post-Minor Feelings world is a rich but confusing existence. The racist predicament has been enumerated (at least in part), but society feels, at best, ambivalent about making space for us - politically, representationally, semantically, and so on. It remains difficult for me to parse the litany of reified white supremacist stereotypes from what is authentically our Asian American culture. 

Take, for example, the “tiger mom.” Even if that label accurately describes our experiences of our parents (and I do know people of Asian descent who claim it, and they aren’t Amy Chua), we have to examine the relative positions and perspectives at play. Do the labels we apply to the people who raised us come from within our culture, or outside it? 

I’m less interested in the etymology of “tiger mom” than I am in the direction the label travels. Does it radiate outward from our community, or is it projected onto us by a white supremacist society? The answer, I think, is “both.” No-one living in America is immune to white supremacist normativity, not even those whom it victimizes. So perhaps “tiger mom” describes many things simultaneously: an Asian or Asian-American caregiver in a traditionally feminine role channeling their cultural practices around childrearing divorced from their original context; a label mockingly and fearfully applied by an ignorant white person; a later generation Asian-American child’s way of surviving, rationalizing, and apologizing for or rationalizing the friction between their family culture with the culture of their social upbringing; and much more. 

Throughout this discourse, it’s important to remember that the real villain here is white supremacy. Sure, there are several mini-bosses along the way, but focusing too much on them can be distracting. In the particular instance of how we parse and dismantle stereotypes, its power cannot be underestimated. It is, after all, the water we swim in. When the white supremacist gaze makes a monolith of a nonwhite culture, it’s just as much about forcing that culture to internalize that perception as it is to indoctrinate those outside against it. 

Representation matters [derogatory]

In the absence of nuanced or divergent depictions of the people who are like us, our imagination is stunted. By offering partial and highly contingent privileges, our capacity for self-actualization is reduced. White supremacy embeds and concretizes stereotypes into our cultural landscape in an attempt to kill its capacity to evolve, and thus to survive. It’s effectively a weaponization of confirmation bias of the broadest and most intimate scope.

The daunting takeaway, of course, is that white supremacy and our cultures of origin interact more than we’d care to admit. So, other than weep and vomit, what’s to be done? I found a surprisingly potent antidote to some of this mess on TikTok. I am 30 and therefore elderly, but it turns out I can get wrecked by the clock app just as well as the youths can. 

Me, simping [derogatory]

On the accounts of @yourkoreandad, @feelingasianpodcast, and @k8sabz I have found absolution in the form of parasocial Asian American re-parenting. These creators, in part, make content around the experience of Asian American children. Nick Cho of @yourkoreandad is a stand-in for the kind, effusive, affirming father figure we all crave, Asian American or not. Hina of @k8sabz offers decadent wish fulfillment for children who would have benefitted from the sensibilities of a rich, queer, opulent upbringing (i.e. all of us). Youngmi Mayer and Brian Park of @feelingasianpodcast are comedians who mine the depths of the Asian American experience, including childhood and parental relationships, through humor and an extremely good and vulnerable podcast. Youngmi is a mom herself, and hearing about (and seeing glimpses of) her son give me hope that the next generation of Asian American kids might be spared some of the fuckery that we are subjected to. 

Watching videos and listening to content from these creators had more of an emotional impact on me than I expected (but whomst among hasn’t cried at a random TikTok). As I alluded to earlier, I’ve been doing a lot of family-of-origin work in therapy, and I’ve found that my imagination around “what could have been” has stagnated. It still sometimes feels too painful, or simply fruitless, to imagine what my life would be like if my childhood emotional needs were met. Nick Cho’s videos were the first of these that I encountered and, as someone with the un-fun kind of daddy issues, they made me weepy. It was powerful — even revolutionary — to see softness and emotional intelligence in an Asian father. 

I suspect that nonbinary icon Hina (@k8sabz) created their parental character as a kind of exercise in what sort of parent they would have wanted (except richer). As a queer Taurus imagining my younger queer self, their content provides a kind of blueprint for how to gas my pretentious inner child way the fuck up. While it’s clearly parody, the love their character has for their child reads as unconditional and empowering. In one TikTok, they’re preparing to host a dinner party when their discontented kid (I think he’s under 10 years old) comes into the room. “Your cream YSL suit, why aren’t you wearing it? You identify as goth, now? Ok, that’s fine.” They then proceed to comprehensively change the decor, dress code, and menu for the party to match his identity exploration. IMAGINE being that supported (yes, supported — not “indulged”). It’s exactly as hyperbolic as our child-selves deserved. 

You either understand what I mean by “podcast therapy” or you don’t. Feeling Asian has been in heavy rotation lately because it’s both unreasonable and unaffordable to see your therapist every day, as tempting as that sounds. Youngmi and Brian talk about being Asian and their feelings and their Asian feelings, which is a rare delicacy. Part of the difficulty of the Asian American experience is a profound lack of opportunities for community exploration around identity, trauma, and caucacity. They, along with their illustrious Asian(-American) illuminati guests, get really vulnerable. It’s also hilarious, and we need both. Without exception, each episode provides at least one (and often several) epiphanies about my identity. Things that previously felt isolating have become points of connection thanks to this service they provide to our community. 

It’s fine, this is fine

The Internet might be a dark cesspool of the worst human instincts, but I also can’t deny that I’m better off with it than without it. If you’re familiar with my personal brand of chaos, this duality probably tracks. I am, after all, accustomed to simultaneity in my search for belonging. I’m deeply grateful for these friendly strangers that occupy a not-insignificant space in my media diet and journey of self-discovery. I don’t think anyone can predict what effect their presence or their work will have, but experience is teaching me that the more fully we can inhabit ourselves, the more likely we are to not jump off a cliff. 

---